This study reports two multi-century regional reconstructions of annual precipitation based on Pinus ponderosa and P. edulis from four sites in central northern Arizona. It compares standard regional and time-nested methods to generate reconstructions from 1581-2016 C.E. and 1529-2016 C.E.,...

Modification of forest trees can occur from a variety of factors. Both cultural and natural processes can injure trees and many injuries can be dated dendrochronologically. Distinguishing between types of injuries, however, is important for understanding past human land-use practices and...

Forest growth processes are driven by site productivity and species functional traits, which are ultimately constrained by cumulative resource demand, resulting in competitive dynamics across successional forest communities. Historical efforts to quantify competition used density metrics or...

Tree rings have been widely used to reconstruct environmental history, especially water availability, because historical records of streamflow are often limited. In the semiarid southwestern USA, springs provide critical water resources and support biodiversity hotspots, but spring flows are poorly ...

Future droughts are expected to become more severe and frequent under future climate change scenarios, likely causing widespread tree mortality in the western USA. Coping with an uncertain future requires an understanding of long-term ecosystem responses in areas where prolonged drought is...

Despite the widespread use of ponderosa pine as an important hydroclimate proxy, we actually understand very little about its climate response in the Northern Rockies. Here, we analyze two new ponderosa pine chronologies to investigate how climate influences annual growth. Despite differences in...

Stand density affects not only structure and growth, but also the health of forests and, subsequently, the functions of forest ecosystems. Here, we integrated dendrochronology and repeated inventories for ponderosa pine research plots to determine whether long-term growth and mortality responded to ...

We reconstruct pandora moth (Coloradia pandora Blake) outbreaks and climate from a 1572-year (435-2006 CE) ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex Laws.) chronology from a lava flow in central Oregon. We took samples from 128 living trees and remnant logs and crossdated the samples using skeleton ...

Trees in more competitive environments appear to respond to climate differently than trees in less competitive environments. In turn, climate patterns may affect inter- or intra-specific competition, favoring certain individuals over others. Using dendrochronological methods, we sampled cores from...

The ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa, Douglas ex C. Lawson) is a climate-sensitive tree species dominant in the mixed conifer stands of the San Bernardino Mountains of California. However, the close proximity to the city of Los Angeles has resulted in extremely high levels of air pollution. Nitrogen ...