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Twentieth Century Changes in the Climate Response of Yellow Pines in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, U.S.A

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Twentieth Century Changes in the Climate Response of Yellow Pines in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, U.S.A University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 8-2009 Twentieth Century Changes in the Climate Response of Yellow Pines in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, U.S.A. Christine Patricia Biermann University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Biermann, Christine Patricia, "Twentieth Century Changes in the Climate Response of Yellow Pines in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, U.S.A.. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2009. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/18 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Christine Patricia Biermann entitled "Twentieth Century Changes in the Climate Response of Yellow Pines in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, U.S.A.." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Master of Science, with a major in Geography. Henri D. Grissino-Mayer, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Sally Horn, Carol Harden Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Christine Patricia Biermann entitled “Twentieth Century Changes in the Climate Response of Yellow Pines in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, U.S.A.” I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science with a major in Geography. Henri D. Grissino-Mayer, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Sally Horn Carol Harden Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) TWENTIETH CENTURY CHANGES IN THE CLIMATE RESPONSE OF YELLOW PINES IN GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK, TENNESSEE, U.S.A. A Thesis Presented for the Master of Science Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Christine Patricia Biermann August 2009 Copyright © 2009 by Christine Patricia Biermann All rights reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the help and support of my advisor, committee members, colleagues, friends, and family. I want to thank my advisor Dr. Henri D. Grissino-Mayer for his guidance and enthusiasm. His passion for dendrochronology is contagious. I also thank my committee members Drs. Sally Horn and Carol Harden for their support, suggestions, and willingness to help. Working in the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Science has been a pleasure, and I am grateful to my fellow graduate students for inspiring me, motivating me, helping me, and sometimes distracting me. Many thanks to Lisa LaForest, John Sakulich, Mark Spond, Grant Harley, Ian Feathers, Saskia van de Gevel, Nancy Li, and Monica Rother. I also want to thank Runy Muñoz and Brad Yarger for assistance with processing and measuring samples. My field work would not have been possible without the help of my advisor and fellow students. Thank you to James Baginski, Henri D. Grissino-Mayer, John Sakulich, Monica Rother, Matthew Kookogey, Nancy Li, Brad Yarger, Josh Brown, Ian Feathers, Mark Spond, and Philip White. Also, many thanks to Lisa LaForest and Jessica Slayton for developing and sharing their yellow pine chronology at Gold Mine Trail. Finally, I want to thank my family and friends for their love and support. Thank you to my parents, for instilling in me a love of learning. Thank you to my sisters, for giving me footsteps to follow in and big shoes to fill. Thank you to James Baginski, for encouraging me and helping me with every step of this thesis, from field work to lab work to cartography. I could not have done it without you, and I wouldn’t have wanted to, either. I am grateful for the fellowship support from the National Science Foundation. This material is based upon work supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate Student Fellowship. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. iii ABSTRACT Previous dendroclimatological research has shown that tree growth is primarily a function of temperature and precipitation. At mid-latitude temperate forest sites, trees have been found to be mainly moisture-sensitive rather than temperature-sensitive. Researchers at the 2007 North American Dendroecological Fieldweek were surprised to find a winter temperature signal in a shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata) chronology from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee. Building on this finding, I evaluated yellow pine climate-tree growth relationships at five sites on the western end of Great Smoky Mountains National Park using correlation, response function, moving correlation, and wavelet analyses. Winter mean minimum temperatures influenced yellow pine growth at all five sites, but spring precipitation and growing season moisture conditions also affected growth. Growth was positively associated with Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) and North Atlantic Ocean (NAO) index values, suggesting that positive phases of the both the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the NAO lead to above average annual tree growth. Pacific Ocean climate variability did not have a strong influence on yellow pine growth in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Climate-growth relationships were temporally unstable at all of the five sites. In the mid-20th century, the response to growing season precipitation and moisture conditions weakened. Simultaneously, the response to winter and fall mean minimum temperatures strengthened. The shift may have been caused by an AMO phase change, age-dependent climate responses, changes in phenology, decreased drought frequency, data quality, or atmospheric pollution. Because the relationship with temperature iv strengthened since 1950, yellow pines in Great Smoky Mountains National Park do not show evidence of divergence between temperature and tree growth. Still, this network of chronologies is not ideal for climate reconstruction because the climate-growth relationships were unstable over time. In the future, climate analysis of other chronologies from the southeastern U.S. will be necessary to determine whether the mid- 20th century shift in climate response at Great Smoky Mountains National Park occurred throughout the region. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION TO DENDROCLIMATOLOGY AND DIVERGENCE..................1 1.1 Background................................................................................................................1 1.2 The Divergence Problem ...........................................................................................2 1.2.1 Overview.............................................................................................................2 1.2.2 Possible Causes...................................................................................................4 1.2.3 Implications.........................................................................................................6 1.3 Purpose of Research...................................................................................................8 1.4 Organization of Thesis.............................................................................................10 2. LITERATURE REVIEW OF TEMPERATURE RECONSTRUCTIONS AND THE DIVERGENCE PROBLEM ..............................................................................................12 2.1 Tree-Ring Based Temperature Reconstructions ......................................................12 2.1.1 Mann et al. (1998).............................................................................................13 2.1.2 McIntyre and McKitrick (2005)........................................................................15 2.1.3 Moberg et al. (2005) .........................................................................................16 2.1.4 Esper and Frank (2004).....................................................................................18 2.2 Issues of Consistency and Divergence.....................................................................20 2.2.1 Briffa et al. (1998) ............................................................................................20 2.2.2 Barber et al. (2000)...........................................................................................21 2.2.3 Driscoll et al. (2005).........................................................................................22 2.2.4 Carrer and Urbinati (2006)................................................................................23 2.2.5 Frank et al. (2007).............................................................................................24
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