New climate science initiative

Rob Wilson is coordinating a new international collaborative initiative called I-BIND (International Blue Intensity Network Development working group), sponsored by the Association of Tree-Ring Research. Blue Intensity is a cost effective image analysis (see figure) analytical method for measuring relative wood density – effectively a method for the masses. The method is about 100x cheaper than standard densitometric methods, but the cheapness does come at a cost with respect to precision and potential bias issues. The I-BIND consortium aims to promote best practice of the BI method to laboratories around the world, encourage further methodological development, while also promoting the development of collaborative links and databases to facilitate network development for both dendroclimatology and  historical dating. The project website is: I-BIND (dendro.team)