INTRODUCTION
The PARC-U of R Tree-Ring Lab is housed with
the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative (PARC), a climate
change research center at the
University
of Regina
(U of R). Researchers in our lab have built a network of tree-ring
chronologies that span the montane, boreal and island forests of
Alberta,
Saskatchewan,
and the Northwest
Territories
and northern Montana
and North Dakota.
In this predominantly sub-humid region, in the rainshadow of the
Rocky Mountains,
annual tree growth is limited mostly by available soil moisture.
Thus our moisture-sensitive tree-ring chronologies are proxies of
seasonal and annual hydroclimate and hydrology. They have been applied
to the reconstruction of precipitation, drought indices, stream
flow, and groundwater levels. The inter-annual to multi-decadal
variability in hydroclimate recorded by the tree rings informs our
understanding of the climate of the western interior, projections
of future climate, reference hydrology and climate derived from
instrumental records, and conventional water management and planning
that assumes a sufficient and stationary water supply.
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