HR: 16:00h
AN: PP54A-01 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: Whither Dendroclimatology?
AU: * Bunn, A G
EM: andy.bunn@wwu.edu
AF: Environmental Sciences, Huxley College, Western Washington University, 501 High St. Mail Stop 9181, Bellingham, WA 98225-9181, United States
AU: Lloyd, A H
EM: lloyd@middlebury.edu
AF: Biology Department, Middlebury College, McCardell Bicentennial Hall, Middlebury, VT 05753, United States
AB: As in other fields of paleoclimatology, uniformitarianism is the key principle in dendroclimatology. The assumption that the processes that form tree rings now are the same as those in the past is what allows climate to be reconstructed from tree rings. Recent years have seen declining ring widths in the northern high latitudes coincident with increasing temperatures despite being an ostensibly temperature limited environment. There are several factors that could play into this phenomenon. It could be that that more nuanced statistical or process models are needed to fully understand the climate | growth relationship. Or, there could be exogenous forcings (e.g., global dimming) that contribute to the shift in the climate | growth relationship, and that understanding the nature of those forcings is needed. What can this "divergence problem" tell us about tree growth and climate and does the apparent loss of sensitivity indicate a violation of the uniformity principle? We will present an analysis of simulated and real tree-ring data that attempts to answer these questions and show that while there are basic gaps in our understanding, the careful modeling of climate | growth relations and the proper attribution of error are keys to the making progress on the "divergence opportunity."
DE: 0473 Paleoclimatology and paleoceanography (3344, 4900)
DE: 0476 Plant ecology (1851)
DE: 1600 GLOBAL CHANGE
DE: 4920 Dendrochronology
DE: 9315 Arctic region (0718, 4207)
SC: Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology [PP]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting