Applications to Water Management

The Potential Consequences of Climate Change for Boulder Colorado’s Water Supplies
Final report (February 2009) of a study carried out by Stratus Consulting, with AMEC Earth & Environmental, the University of Colorado (CEAE), NCAR, and WWA, to assess the joint impacts of past climate variability (represented by tree-ring records) and future climate change (represented by GCM output). This work was funded by the NOAA Climate Programs Office - Sector Program.

Planning Workshop to Develop Hydroclimatic Reconstructions (May 2005, Tucson, AZ)

 

General Tree-Ring Resources

Ultimate Tree-ring Web Pages
Put together by Henri Grissino-Mayer at the University of Tennessee, these extensive pages have almost everything you need to know about tree-ring science.

Crossdating Demo
Paul Sheppard of the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research (LTRR) has an online demo for practicing the crossdating technique (“skeleton plotting”) widely used to date tree rings.

Tree-ring research units working in Colorado and the West

University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research
University of Arkansas Tree-Ring Laboratory
University of Nevada-Reno Dendrolab
University of Colorado - INSTAAR Dendrochronology Lab
University of California, Los Angeles Paleoecology Lab (Dr. Glen MacDonald)
Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research, Inc. (RMTRR)
Lamont-Doherty Tree-Ring Lab (Columbia U.)

Other NOAA RISAs sponsoring paleohydrology research in the West

California Applications Program (CAP)
Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS)

 

References on Tree Rings and Climate/Streamflow

(Several of these references are linked to a PDF of the paper. Contact us if you have difficulty obtaining any of the other references)

Cook, E. R., D. M. Meko, D. W. Stahle, and M. K. Cleaveland. 1999. Drought reconstructions for the continental United States, J. Climate, 12(4): 1145-1162.

Cook, E.R., C.A.Woodhouse, C.M. Eakin, D.M. Meko, and D.W. Stahle. 2004. Long-term
aridity changes in the western United States. Science, 306, 1015-1018.

Jain, S., C.A. Woodhouse, M.P.Hoerling. 2002. Multidecadal streamflow regimes in the interior western United States: implications for the vulnerability of water resources. Geophysical Research Letters, 29: 2036-2039.

Meko, D. M., C.W. Stockton, and W.R. Boggess. 1995. The tree-ring record of severe sustained drought, Water Resources Bulletin, 31, 789-801.

Meko, D. and D.A. Graybill. 1995. Tree-ring reconstructions of upper Gila River discharge. Water Resources Bulletin 31: 605-615.

Meko, D.M., M.D.Therrell, C.H.Baisan, and M.K. Hughes. 2001. Sacramento River flow reconstructed to A.D. 869 from tree rings: J. of the American Water Resources Association 37(4): 1029-1040.

Meko, D.M., C.W. Stockton, and W.R. Boggess. 1995. The tree-ring record of severe sustained drought. Water Resources Bulletin 31: 789-801.

Meko, D.M. and C.A. Woodhouse. 2005. Tree-ring footprint of joint hydrologic drought in Sacramento and Upper Colorado River basins, western USA. Journal of Hydrology, 308, 196-213.

Meko, D.M., Woodhouse, C.A., Baisan, C.A., Knight, T., Lukas, J.J., Hughes, M.K., and Salzer, M.W. 2007. Medieval Drought in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Geophysical Research Letters 34, L10705.

Ni, F., T. Cavazos, M. K. Hughes, A. C. Comrie, and G. Funkhouser. 2002. Cool-season precipitation in the Southwestern USA since AD 1000: Comparison of linear and nonlinear techniques for reconstruction. International Journal of Climatology, 22: 1645-1662.

Smith, L.P. and C.W. Stockton. 1981. Reconstructed stream flow for the Salt and Verde Rivers from tree-ring data. Water Resources Bulletin 17: 939-947.

Stockton, C.W. and G.C. Jacoby. 1976. Long-term surface water supply and streamflow levels in the upper Colorado River basin. Lake Powell Research Project Bulletin No. 18, Inst. of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, 70 pp.

Woodhouse, C.A. 1999. Artificial neural networks and dendroclimatic reconstructions: an example from the Front Range, Colorado, USA. The Holocene 9: 521-529.

Woodhouse, C.A. 2000. Extending hydrologic records with tree rings. Water Resources Impact 2:25-27.

Woodhouse, C.A. 2001. A tree-ring reconstruction of streamflow for the Colorado Front Range. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 37: 561-570.

Woodhouse, C.A. 2003. A 431-year reconstruction of western Colorado snowpack from tree rings. Journal of Climate 16: 1551-1561.

Woodhouse, C.A., 2004. A Paleo Perspective on Hydroclimatic Variability in the Western United States. Aquatic Sciences 66:346-356.

Woodhouse, C.A., S.T. Gray, and D.M. Meko. 2006. Updated streamflow reconstructions for the Upper Colorado River basin. Water Resources Research 42(5): W05415

Woodhouse, C.A. and J.J. Lukas. 2006. Multi-century tree-ring reconstructions of Colorado streamflow for water resource planning. Climatic Change 78: 293-315.

Woodhouse, C.A. and J.J. Lukas. 2006. Drought, Tree Rings, and Water Resource Management in Colorado. Canadian Water Resources Journal 31(4): 1-14.

Woodhouse, C.A. and J.T. Overpeck. 1998. 2000 years of drought variability in the central United States. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 79: 2693-2714.