Jeff Lukas
is a Professional Scientist with the Institute of Arctic and Alpine
Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where
he manages the INSTAAR
Dendrochronology Lab. Jeff has been involved with tree-ring
research since 1998, and has been working with water managers
to develop tree-ring reconstructions of streamflow since 2002.
Jeff's
home page at WWA
Connie Woodhouse
is Associate Professor in the Department
of Geography and Regional Development at the University of
Arizona in Tucson, AZ. From 1998 to 2006, she was a Physical Scientist
in the Paleoclimatology
Branch of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Boulder,
CO. She has been involved with tree-ring research since the late
1980s, and has been working with water managers on reconstructions
of streamflow since 1998.
Connie's
home page at UA
A Brief History
In the late 1990s, Connie began to
explore the feasibility of reconstructing precipitation and streamflow
from existing tree-ring chronologies in Colorado's Front Range.
The initial results were promising and she recognized that they
could be improved with additional tree-ring collections in the
Front Range, and also in western Colorado, where few tree-ring
chronologies had been developed since the 1960s. Starting in summer
2000, she and Jeff began systematically updating existing collections
and collecting new data at tree-ring sites across Colorado, for
the purpose of developing new hydroclimatic (precipitation, streamflow,
drought) reconstructions. In spring 2002, Connie and Robert S.
(Robin) Webb of NOAA-ESRL received a multi-year grant from NOAA's
Office of Global Programs, entitled "Extended Hydroclimatic
Records for the Upper Colorado River Basin", to work with
water managers to use this growing network of tree-ring chronologies
to develop hydroclimatic reconstructions. Partnerships with several
water entities resulted in over 20 reconstructions of streamflow
for Colorado, made accessible through the TreeFlow
website housed at NOAA Paleo. A concurrent research effort
by Connie with Stephen Gray (USGS, now Wyoming State Climatologist)
and David Meko (U. of Arizona) generated 10 new reconstructions
for the Upper Colorado River Basin.
WWA has funded and supported Connie
and Jeff's work on streamflow reconstructions since 2004, with
a focus on making these data more useful and accessible to water
resource managers. Recent and ongoing efforts include the presentation
of technical workshops,
the development of new web resources, and the development of additional
reconstructions for basins in Colorado and adjacent states.
A list of Connie and Jeff's recent
publications related to tree-ring reconstructions of streamflow
can be found here.
