Dendroclimatic Reconstruction for Western China Using Enhanced-Video Image Analysis

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The region encompassing the Qinghai-Xizang (Tibetan) Plateau is of special importance in the study of global climatic variation because, as the largest and highest plateau in the world, Qinghai-Xizang strongly influences such large-scale climatic phenomena as the Asian monsoon. Our understanding of the climate of this area is severely constrained by lack of meteorological data predating 1950. This award supports a project designed to increase our understanding of the nature and causes of climatic variation in western China over the past thousand years. Tree-ring data from western china will be used to reconstruct temperature and precipitation variation. A significant component of the research effort will be the development of methods to measure climatically sensitive xylem characteristics (e.g., density, cell structure) using image- analysis techniques. The validity of the reconstructions will be assessed through comparisons with other proxy climatic data (e.g., historical records, isotopic variations in glacial ice). The reconstruction will be used to address (1) the nature of long-term temperature trends, (2) the temporal and spatial patterns of drought, and (3) the relationship between trends in temperature on the Tibetan Plateau and Asian monsoon.