Sediment deposition on floodplains is essential for the development and maintenance of riparian ecosystems. Upstream erosion is known to influence downstream floodplain construction, but linking these disparate processes is challenging, especially over large spatial and temporal scales. Sediment...

The effects of river regulation on the flow patterns of rivers in western North America often mimic the impacts of naturally occurring episodic drought. On the Dolores River in southwestern Colorado, two distinct periods of flow modification have occurred, with very different drought-like...

Trees provide important ecosystem services such as hillslope stabilization from landslides and rockfall protection, and may also be useful indicators of likelihood of those events in the future. Anatomical changes of tree wood are caused by various physical and biological phenomena. There are...

Tree rings have been central to the understanding of variability of flow of the Colorado River. Spurred by steadily declining flows after the 1920s, early tree-ring research drew attention to the importance of climate variability to water supply by identifying episodes in the past that were even...

Streamflow variability on timescales of decades to centuries becomes increasingly important as water managers grapple with shortages imposed by increasing demand and limited supply, and possibly exacerbated by climate change. Two applications of dendrochronology to the study of flow variability are ...

Treeline advance is a well-established response of treeline ecotones to climate change. However, the degree to which tree growth and establishment drives treeline movement is widely debated. We used geographic information system (GIS) analysis of aerial photographs and dendrochronological analysis...

Latewood width tree-ring chronologies from arid-site conifers in the southwestern United States are correlated with precipitation during portions of the summer monsoon season. The onset date and length of the monsoon season varies across the region, and these regional differences in summer rainfall ...

The annual cycle of precipitation in the southwestern United States is characterized by a bimodal distribution. El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) episodes influence cool-season precipitation, while the North American Monsoon (NAM) brings warm-season rainfall to the region. Because the...

Mean daily to monthly precipitation averages peak in late July over eastern Colorado and some of the most damaging Front Range flash floods have occurred because of extreme 1-day rainfall events during this period. Tree-ring chronologies of adjusted latewood width in ponderosa pine from eastern...

Twentieth-century fire exclusion has produced unnatural and undesirable changes in vegetation structure and dynamics of many rangelands of western North America, but not all kinds of ecosystems have been so affected. A comparison of the historical and modern fire regimes, especially in peripheral...