Climatic Inferences from Dendroecological Reconstructions

Abstract

Tree rings have long been employed by ecologists to study the local-scale dynamics of forest stands and woodlands, but only recently have network approaches been applied to evaluate regional and broader-scale processes. As with dendroclimatic data (e.g., ring-width and ring-density chronologies), climatic drivers become much more evident in dendroecological data aggregated at broad spatial scales (relative to local-scale data). Study of dendroecology networks has led to new insights on climatic variability and change and their impacts on ecosystems. In addition to the power of network approaches, dendroecology has advanced in recent decades because of the ready availability of, and comparison with, high quality, independent dendroclimatic reconstructions of various hydro-climatic parameters (e.g., drought indices, precipitation and temperature) and ocean-atmosphere indices (e.g., ENSO, PDO, and AMO). Dendroecological reconstructions that have been most commonly employed in climate-related analyses are disturbance histories (e.g., fire and insect outbreaks). We review examples of these applications from our studies in the Southwestern United States. We also compile and describe here, for the first time, a regional network of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) establishment dates from the Southwest, and we show that episodic natality patterns are probably associated with decadal wet periods. Using another example of decadal variability in forest fire histories—specifically a hiatus in fire occurrence in the circa 1780–1840 time period—we make a case that regional to continental-scale dendroecological reconstructions can provide useful insights about ‘ecologically-effective climate change’. We define this type of climatic variability as the patterns of climate at interannual, decadal and centennial scales that are most distinctly reflected in synchronous ecological responses at regional and broader scales. In the context of dendroclimatology, primary values of the investigation of specific climatic patterns that elicit regional and broader ecological responses is that these studies provide insights about climate variability that is relevant to ecosystems, and in turn, human concerns about future climate change impacts on ecosystems.