Introduction

Dendro Tools is a collection of specialized computer programs that can assist a dendroclimatologist in developing and analyzing estimates of paleoclimate from tree rings. The program includes a suite of dataset, statistics, and time series tools as outlined below in order to accomplish this task. Dendro Tools is an open source project, licensed under the GNU General Public License (see below).

Outline of this User's Guide

R Required

R is a free, open-source environment for statistical computing and graphics (R Core Development Team 2013). Dendro Tools uses R in order to run statistical routines by tweaking prewritten R script based on the user input and running R in the background. The results are then input back into Dendro Tools for final processing. In addition to the base installation of R available at www.r-project.org, three contributed packages for R are also required:

  1. dplR
  2. lmtest
  3. psych

These packages are installed automatically by Dendro Tools once user saves the location of the "RScript.exe" file (see Running Dendro Tools topic). All three of these packages can also be downloaded from within R by selecting "Packages", "Install Package(s)...", and then selecting the CRAN mirror closest to you. If you are using Windows Vista or higher, R will need to be started in administrator mode in order to install the packages. This can be done by right-clicking the icon and selecting "Run as administrator". Note that one of these packages is a suite of useful routines developed for the tree-ring community by Andrew Bunn (dplR; Bunn 2008).

Uninstalling Dendro Tools

The Dendro Tools setup program uses Windows Installer technology. You can uninstall Dendro Tools by doing the following (depending on the version of Windows):

  1. Open the "Add/Remove Programs" or "Programs and Features" section of the Windows Control Panel.
  2. Find and click on "Dendro Tools".
  3. Click "Remove" or "Uninstall".

Dendro Tools Setup will then run and completely remove the program from your computer, but it will not remove R. R can be uninstalled via the same three step process above except replace "Dendro Tools" with "R for Windows" x.x.x, where x.x.x is the version number.

GNU General Public License

This file is part of Dendro Tools. Dendro Tools is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. Dendro Tools is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Dendro Tools. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Acknowledgements

The development of this program has benefited enormously from discussions and testing with: Dr. David Stahle, Dr. Ed Cook, Dr. Ana Carolina Maioli Campos Barbosa, Jesse Edmondson, Daniel Stahle, Laurie Stahle, Kathryn Wolff, Meghan Foard, and the participatants of the 2013 International Workshop of Tropical Dendrochronology in Lavras, MG, Brazil. The program has also benefited from the dplR package developed for R by Andrew Bunn (Bunn 2008). Work on this project was sponsored by the National Science Foundation Paleoclimate Program (ATM-0753399) and NOAA Climate Change and Detection, Paleoclimatology Program (NA08OAR4310727).

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