Temperature Research to Aid Climate Studies
A three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant will allow researchers to build a North American Temperature Atlas (NATA) with more than five centuries of data to inform climate studies and guide natural resource managers.
Assistant Professor Karen King in the UT Department of Geography and Sustainability is the principal investigator for the $230,732 NSF grant.
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will be collaborating on the NATA with her co-principal investigators from Columbia University, the University of Arizona, the University of Idaho, and Indiana University. The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory also is involved. King will have a UT graduate research assistant on the project for two years, and other graduate students will have opportunities to participate in field and lab work for the NATA.
"This funding will allow me to expand work I've already started on in the western part of North America to create a gridded temperature reconstruction that provides coverage for all of North America," King said.
Her recently published research from the West showed that the past century has seen more frequent periods of hot drought, a combination of extreme heat and drought conditions.
Analyzing Tree Samples
Many collections already exist of the tree samples they seek. "It is important to me that my team approaches dendrochronological research from a 'minimizing disturbance' perspective," King said.
"The full NATA dataset will extend back to 1300 CE in many places, but we are aiming for 1500 CE across all grid cells for North America," she said.
Forest to Lab to Community
The project represents the efforts of many in the tree-ring community, King said. "My goal in leading this effort is to build a dataset from the tree-ring community for the greater community."
Once the dataset is complete, the researchers will make it available on a digital platform, where others can analyze and interpret it.
They plan a series of webinars about climate change impacts in North America, for the general public as well as managers of natural resources, including water and forests.
They also expect to develop several lessons for middle and high school students on climate change through the lens of trees. "These materials will be publicly available for educators, and we hope to get involved with programming in Knox County Schools or other organizations such as Ijams Nature Center," King said.
To apply for the NSF funding, King worked with the College of Arts and Sciences' Office of Research and Creative Activity, which recently expanded to support faculty with proposals. "Annie Brown and Jenny Toll were excellent to work with and super helpful," King said.
The researchers will examine a measure called blue intensity, which is closely coupled with seasonal temperature variability when the tree was growing. They target temperature-sensitive species, such a spruce and hemlock in the eastern US.
"We then can use these tree-ring estimates of temperature to look at the relationship between temperature and drought in the modern period and compare it to the past," King explained.
More information:
Karen E. King et al, Increasing prevalence of hot drought across western North America since the 16th century, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adj4289
Provided by University of Tennessee at Knoxville