TY - JOUR
T1 - Drought duration and frequency in the U.S. Corn Belt during the last millennium (AD 992-2004)
AU - Stambaugh, Michael C.
AU - Guyette, Richard P.
AU - McMurry, Erin R.
AU - Cook, Edward R.
AU - Meko, David M.
AU - Lupo, Anthony R.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (ATM-0601884). Previous support was received from the University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry and the USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station . We thank Daniel Dey and Joe Marschall for technical and fieldwork assistance. We thank the numerous student workers who have assisted in sample collection and preparation. In addition we thank the many private landowners for granting permission to access study streams. Lamont-Doherty Contribution Number 7382.
PY - 2011/2/15
Y1 - 2011/2/15
N2 - Drought is among the most costly natural hazards affecting the United States, averaging $6 to $8 billion annually in damages, primarily in crop losses. Mitigating the impacts of drought through planning and preparedness has the potential to save billions of dollars. We used a new long tree-ring chronology developed from the central U.S. to reconstruct annual drought and characterize past drought duration, frequency, and cycles in the U.S. Corn Belt region during the last millennium. This is the first paleoclimate reconstruction achieved with subfossil oak wood in the U.S. and increases the current dendroclimatic record in the central U.S. agricultural region by over 500 years. A tree ring-width drought response function was calibrated and verified against monthly instrumental Palmer Hydrologic Drought Index (PHDI) during the summer season (JJA). Separate reconstructions tailored to emphasize high-frequency and low-frequency variations indicate that drought conditions over the period of instrumental records (since 1895) do not exhibit the full range of variability, severity, or duration of droughts during the last millennium. For example, three years in the last millennium were drier than 1934, a classic Dust-Bowl year and the driest year of the instrumental period. Thirteen decadal to multidecadal droughts (i.e., ≥10 years) occurred during the last millennium - the longest lasting sixty-one years and centered on the late twelfth century. Reconstructions exhibited quasi-periodicity at bidecadal and century-scale periods. Significant rhythms in drought were identified near 20-yr and 128-yr periods. The tree-ring drought reconstruction shows promise in providing new information about long-term climate variability in the agricultural regions that could potentially span multimillennia. We postulate that tree-ring chronologies (i.e., tree growth), thus far under-utilized in agricultural applications, have the potential to match contributions of instrumental climate data.
AB - Drought is among the most costly natural hazards affecting the United States, averaging $6 to $8 billion annually in damages, primarily in crop losses. Mitigating the impacts of drought through planning and preparedness has the potential to save billions of dollars. We used a new long tree-ring chronology developed from the central U.S. to reconstruct annual drought and characterize past drought duration, frequency, and cycles in the U.S. Corn Belt region during the last millennium. This is the first paleoclimate reconstruction achieved with subfossil oak wood in the U.S. and increases the current dendroclimatic record in the central U.S. agricultural region by over 500 years. A tree ring-width drought response function was calibrated and verified against monthly instrumental Palmer Hydrologic Drought Index (PHDI) during the summer season (JJA). Separate reconstructions tailored to emphasize high-frequency and low-frequency variations indicate that drought conditions over the period of instrumental records (since 1895) do not exhibit the full range of variability, severity, or duration of droughts during the last millennium. For example, three years in the last millennium were drier than 1934, a classic Dust-Bowl year and the driest year of the instrumental period. Thirteen decadal to multidecadal droughts (i.e., ≥10 years) occurred during the last millennium - the longest lasting sixty-one years and centered on the late twelfth century. Reconstructions exhibited quasi-periodicity at bidecadal and century-scale periods. Significant rhythms in drought were identified near 20-yr and 128-yr periods. The tree-ring drought reconstruction shows promise in providing new information about long-term climate variability in the agricultural regions that could potentially span multimillennia. We postulate that tree-ring chronologies (i.e., tree growth), thus far under-utilized in agricultural applications, have the potential to match contributions of instrumental climate data.
KW - Agriculture
KW - Dendrochronology
KW - Palmer drought
KW - Quercus
KW - Tree ring
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U2 - 10.1016/j.agrformet.2010.09.010
DO - 10.1016/j.agrformet.2010.09.010
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:78650223562
SN - 0168-1923
VL - 151
SP - 154
EP - 162
JO - Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
JF - Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
IS - 2
ER -