EAGER: Intra-seasonal Wood Anatomy to Assess Millennia-long Regional Climate Reconstructions

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This project will execute a research strategy to determine the processes underlying tree ring formation, from the individual tree level tree-ring formation to regional patterns of plant growth at the landscape scale. The researcher will also use field and remote sensing observations, combined with field manipulations, to establish the causal relationships of climate variability and tree ring growth. The project builds on an EPSCOR-funded field program called Nev-CAN (Nevada Climate-Ecohydrological Assessment Network), which will provide high temporal and spatial resolution monitoring of atmospheric, soil and vegetation variables using in place instrumentation and remote sensing. The study areas are the Sheep and Snake Ranges in Nevada, where the primary tree vegetation is mountain conifers, including the Bristlecone pine, a tree used extensively in paleoclimate reconstructions using tree rings.The broader impacts of the proposal include postdoctoral mentoring and an international collaboration with a Canadian group active in this type of work. The study has the potential to improve our understanding of how bristlecone pine, a tree that provides some of the longest and most important paleoclimate records, reacts to climate variability. In addition, the results of this work may contribute to improved risk assessments for Great Basin ecosystems.