Collaborative Research: Shifting Seasonality of Northern Forest Response to Arctic Environmental Change

Lead PI: Dr. Rosanne D'Arrigo , Kevin Anchukaitis

Unit Affiliation: Biology and Paleo Environment, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)

June 2009 - May 2013
Inactive
North America
Project Type: Research

DESCRIPTION: Interior boreal forests, continuous, treeline forests, and just north of the treeline will be sampled to collect tree ring records of the paleoclimate. These will be used to determine any thresholds, time-dependent changes, or nonlinear shifts related to changing climate seasonality using correlation, Kalman filter, spectral analyses and other techniques. This will be done to determine how boreal forests will respond to present warming.

OUTCOMES: Found that tree ring growth correlated to summer temperatures from 1901-50 but not from 1950 on when rings became wider and denser. Demonstrated that the last century was 1.2+/-0.16 oC warmer than the long-term preindustrial mean. Found that maximum latewood density tracks summer temperature well.