Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains accounts for around one-third of California’s water supply. Melting snow provides water into dry summer months characteristic of the region’s Mediterranean climate. As climate changes, understanding patterns of snowpack, snowmelt, and biological response is critical in this region of agricultural, recreational, and ecological value. Here we investigated the relationships between tree rings of montane conifer trees (Tsuga mertensiana, Abies magnifica, Abies concolor, Calocedrus decurrens, Juniperus occidentalis, and Pinus ponderosa) and regional climate indices with the goal of reconstructing April 1 snow-water equivalent (SWE) in the North Fork American River watershed of the Sierra Nevada. Chronologies were positively correlated with April 1 SWE of the year prior to ring formation. Temporal trends in correlation between tree-ring chronologies and climate indices indicate strengthening tree growth response to climate over time. We developed a skillful, nested reconstruction for April 1 SWE, 1661–2013. Variability of the reconstruction is within the envelope of 20th and 21st-century variability; however, the 2015 record low snowpack is unprecedented in the tree-ring record, as in results from previous studies. Future research should focus on integrating modern snow sensor data into paleoclimate research and understanding mechanistic linkages between snow and tree growth response.
AbatzoglouJT (2011)
Influence of the PNA on declining mountain snowpack in the western United States. International Journal of Climatology31(8): 1135–1142.
2.
AllenDM (1974)
The relationship between variable selection and data augmentation and a method for prediction. Technometrics16(1): 125–127.
3.
AndersonSMoserCLTootleGA, et al. (2012)
Snowpack reconstructions incorporating climate in the Upper Green River Basin (Wyoming). Tree-Ring Research68(2): 105–115.
4.
AppletonSNGeorgeSS (2018)
High-elevation mountain hemlock growth as a surrogate for cool-season precipitation in Crater Lake National Park, USA. Dendrochronologia52: 20–28.
5.
BarnettTPAdamJCLettenmaierDP (2005)
Potential impacts of a warming climate on water availability in snow-dominated regions. Nature438(7066): 303–309.
6.
BarnhartTBMolotchNPLivnehB, et al. (2016)
Snowmelt rate dictates streamflow. Geophysical Research Letters43(15): 8006–8016.
7.
BelmecheriSBabstFWahlER, et al. (2016)
Multi-century evaluation of Sierra Nevada snowpack. Nature Climate Change6(1): 2–3.
8.
BerghuijsWWoodsRHrachowitzM (2014)
A precipitation shift from snow towards rain leads to a decrease in streamflow. Nature Climate Change4(7): 583–586.
9.
BunnAG (2008)
A dendrochronology program library in R (dplR). Dendrochronologia26(2): 115–124.
10.
CarleD (2015) Introduction to water in California.
Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
11.
CarterJLReshVH (2005) Pacific coast rivers of the coterminous United States. In: Benke AC and Cushing CE (eds) Rivers of North America. New York: Elsevier, pp. 540–589.
12.
ChangHBonnetteMR (2016)
Climate change and water-related ecosystem services: Impacts of drought in California, USA. Ecosystem Health and Sustainability2(12): e01254.
13.
CookER (1985) A time series analysis approach to tree ring standardization. PhD Thesis, University of Arizona.
14.
CookERBriffaK (1990) A comparison of some tree-ring standardization methods. In: Cook ER and Kairiukstis LA (eds) Methods of Dendrochronology: Applications in the Environmental Sciences. New York: Springer, pp. 153–162.
15.
CookERKairiukstisLA (2013) Methods of Dendrochronology: Applications in the Environmental Sciences.
New York:
Springer.
16.
CookERSeagerRCaneMA, et al. (2007)
North American drought: Reconstructions, causes, and consequences. Earth-Science Reviews81(1–2): 93–134.
D’ArrigoRWilsonRLiepertB, et al. (2008)
On the ‘divergence problem’ in northern forests: A review of the tree-ring evidence and possible causes. Global and Planetary Change60(3–4): 289–305.
19.
DettingerMDAndersonML (2015)
Storage in California’s reservoirs and snowpack in this time of drought. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science13(2): 1.
20.
DettingerMDCayanDRDiazHF, et al. (1998)
North–south precipitation patterns in western North America on interannual-to-decadal timescales. Journal of Climate11(12): 3095–3111.
21.
DolancCRWestfallRDSaffordHD, et al. (2013)
Growth–climate relationships for six subalpine tree species in a Mediterranean climate. Canadian Journal of Forest Research43(12): 1114–1126.
EsperJFrankD (2009)
Divergence pitfalls in tree-ring research. Climatic Change94(3): 261–266.
24.
FrittsH (1976) Tree Rings and Climate.
London:
Academic Press.
25.
GrahamNEHughesMK (2007)
Reconstructing the mediaeval low stands of Mono Lake, Sierra Nevada, California, USA. The Holocene17(8): 1197–12102.
26.
GriffinDAnchukaitisKJ (2014)
How unusual is the 2012–2014 California drought?Geophysical Research Letters41(24): 9017–9023.
27.
HolmesRL (1983)
Computer-assisted quality control in tree-ring dating and measurement. Tree-Ring Society43: 69–78.
28.
HowittRMacEwanDMedellín-AzuaraJ, et al. (2017) Economic Analysis of the 2015 Drought for California Agriculture.
Berkeley, CA:
Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California.
29.
HughesMKBrownPM (1992)
Drought frequency in central California since 101 BC recorded in giant sequoia tree rings. Climate Dynamics6(3–4): 161–167.
30.
HughesMKTouchanRBrownPM (1996) A multimillennial network of giant sequoia chronologies for dendroclimatology. In: MekoDM (ed.) Tree Rings, Environment and Humanity.
Tucson, AZ:
Radiocarbon, pp. 225–234.
31.
IngramBLMalamud-RoamF (2013) The West Without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us About Tomorrow.
Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
32.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2014) Climate change 2014: Synthesis report. Contribution of working groups I, II and III to the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Core writing team, RK Pachauri and LA Meyer, eds.). Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC.
33.
LittellJSPedersonGTGrayST, et al. (2016)
Reconstructions of Columbia River streamflow from tree‐ring chronologies in the Pacific Northwest, USA. JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association52(5): 1121–1141.
34.
LumleyTLumleyMT (2013) Package ‘leaps’. Regression Subset Selection (Thomas Lumley Based on Fortran Code by Alan Miller). Available at: http://CRAN. R-project. org/package= leaps (accessed 18 March 2018).
35.
MallowsCL (2000)
Some comments on CP. Technometrics42(1): 87–94.
36.
MargulisSACort́esGGirottoM, et al. (2016)
Characterizing the extreme 2015 snowpack deficit in the Sierra Nevada (USA) and the implications for drought recovery. Geophysical Research Letters43(12): 6341–6349.
37.
MekoDMStahleDWGriffinD, et al. (2011a)
Inferring precipitation-anomaly gradients from tree rings. Quaternary International235(1–2): 89–100.
38.
MekoDMTouchanRAnchukaitisKJ (2011b)
Seascorr: A Matlab program for identifying the seasonal climate signal in an annual tree-ring time series. Computers & Geosciences37(9): 1234–1241.
39.
MontoyaEDozierJMeiringW (2014)
Biases of April 1 snow water equivalent records in the Sierra Nevada and their associations with large-scale climate indices. Geophysical Research Letters41(16): 5912–5918.
40.
MooneyHZavaletaE (2016) Ecosystems of California.
Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
41.
MusselmanKNClarkMPLiuC, et al. (2017)
Slower snowmelt in a warmer world. Nature Climate Change7(3): 214–219.
42.
NakazawaM (2015) fmsb: Functions for medical statistics book with some demographic data. R package version 0.5.2. Available at: https://rdrr.io/cran/fmsb/
43.
PedersonGTGraySTWoodhouseCA, et al. (2011)
The unusual nature of recent snowpack declines in the North American cordillera. Science333(6040): 332–335.
44.
PetersonDWPetersonDL (2001)
Mountain hemlock growth responds to climatic variability at annual and decadal time scales. Ecology82(12): 3330–3345.
45.
PRISM Climate Group (2004) PRISM Climate Data.
Corvallis, OR:
Oregon State University.
46.
R Core Team (2018) R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
47.
RevelleW (2018) psych: Procedures for psychological, psychometric, and personality research (R package version 1.8.4).
Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University.
48.
RobesonSM (2015)
Revisiting the recent California drought as an extreme value. Geophysical Research Letters42(16): 6771–6779.
49.
SeageRHoerlingMSchubertS, et al. (2015)
Causes of the 2011–14 California drought. Journal of Climate28(18): 6997–7024.
50.
SpeerJH (2010) Fundamentals of Tree-Ring Research.
Tucson, AZ:
University of Arizona Press.
51.
StahleDWD’ArrigoRDKrusicPJ, et al. (1998)
Experimental dendroclimatic reconstruction of the Southern Oscillation. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society79(10): 2137–2152.
52.
StahleDWGriffinRMekoD, et al. (2013)
The ancient blue oak woodlands of California: Longevity and hydroclimatic history. Earth Interactions17(12): 1–23.
53.
StokesMA (1996) An Introduction to Tree-Ring Dating.
Tucson, AZ:
University of Arizona Press.
54.
TimilsenaJPiechotaT (2008)
Regionalization and reconstruction of snow water equivalent in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Journal of Hydrology352(1–2): 94–106.
55.
TouchanRMekoDHughesMK (1999)
A 396-year reconstruction of precipitation in southern Jordan 1. JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association35(1): 49–59.
56.
TouchanRWoodhouseCAMekoDM, et al. (2011)
Millennial precipitation reconstruction for the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico, reveals changing drought signal. International Journal of Climatology31(6): 896–906.
57.
TunnicliffBM (1975) The Historical Potential of Snowfall as a Water Resource in Arizona.
Tucson, AZ:
The University of Arizona.
58.
WahlERDiazHFSmerdonJE, et al. (2014)
Late winter temperature response to large tropical volcanic eruptions in temperate western North America: Relationship to ENSO phases. Global and Planetary Change122: 238–250.
59.
WahlERZoritaETrouetV, et al. (2019)
Jet stream dynamics, hydroclimate, and fire in California from 1600 CE to present. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences116(12): 5393–5398.
60.
WesterlingAL (2016)
Increasing western us forest wildfire activity: Sensitivity to changes in the timing of spring. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences371(1696): 20150178.
61.
WigleyTMBriffaKRJonesPD (1984)
On the average value of correlated time series, with applications in dendroclimatology and hydrometeorology. Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology23(2): 201–213.
62.
WilsonD (1992) Sawdust Trails in the Truckee Basin: A History of Lumbering Operations, 1856-1936.
Nevada City, CA:
Nevada County Historical.
63.
WiseEK (2010)
Spatiotemporal variability of the precipitation dipole transition zone in the western United States. Geophysical Research Letters37(7): L07706.
64.
WoodhouseCA (2003)
A 431-yr reconstruction of western Colorado snowpack from tree rings. Journal of Climate16(10): 1551–1561.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
