HR: 0800h
AN: PP31A-0178    [Abstracts]
TI: Tree-ring Chronologies, Water Scarcity, and Climatic Change in Utah: Applying a Paleoclimatic Perspective to Present-day Drought Problems in the Water-stressed West
AU: * Tingstad, A H
EM: abbie1@ucla.edu
AU: MacDonald, G M
EM: macdonal@geog.ucla.edu
AB: Drought is one of the most common and devastating natural disasters worldwide. One area that is particularly prone to periods of drought is the western United States. Water scarcity in the western U.S. has recently received political and popular attention as this part of the world is currently experiencing a multi-year, regional drought. As western states continue to experience population growth and further development of agriculture and industry, it becomes increasingly important to understand natural cycles of drought, especially given recent predictions for increased aridity in the western United States if global temperatures rise according to current expectations. This study uses tree-ring chronologies based on ring-width measurements from Pinus edulis Engelm. (Two-needle pinyon) and Picea engelmannii Parry ex Engelm. (Engelmann spruce) to reconstruct drought patterns in the Uinta Mountains, Utah, a major source area for the Green River, which is the principal tributary of the Colorado River. These chronologies demonstrate that drought in the Uintas has been cyclic over the last several hundred years, and that the 20th Century may have experienced fewer and less severe droughts than in centuries past. In addition, the importance of both storms originating in the Pacific and those related to the summer monsoon is noted. Comparisons are made with other tree-ring chronologies from the western United States to suggest that concurrent, multi-year droughts are a regular feature of climate in the western U.S. Current efforts to incorporate this information into policy-making and planning in Utah are discussed.
DE: 0473 Paleoclimatology and paleoceanography (3344, 4900)
DE: 1616 Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513)
SC: Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology [PP]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting