What can trees tell us about history, climate, and our shared future?

In this interdisciplinary presentation, artist Heather Bird Harris and dendrochronologist Clay Tucker, joined in conversation by ecologist Neil Pederson, invite audiences to read tree rings as living archives—primary sources that record centuries of environmental change and human intervention.

Drawing on collaborative research with some of Georgia’s oldest living trees, Harris and Tucker show how patterns of growth and stress preserved in tree rings reveal climate shifts, ecological disruption, and the lasting impacts of American settler colonization. As climate change increasingly disrupts seasonal cycles, these rings also expose a growing temporal instability, a breakdown in the rhythms of growth and rest that mirrors how our own sense of time is being unsettled by ecological upheaval. This program invites audiences to learn how to read these living records, expanding our understanding of time beyond human history and deepening awareness of the intertwined fate of all life on Earth.

$5 for MIT affiliates; $15 for general public.

We have a limited number of free tickets available for full-time students with ID. Please reach out to museumregadmin@mit.edu.