My current research projects include hydroclimatic reconstructions of the Missouri River basin, investigations of Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine to understand past temperature variability, and ongoing research with the Climate Assessment of the Southwest (CLIMAS) program, focusing on problems and challenges related to water availability, primarily in the upper Rio Grande basin in New Mexico. Several past project are also included; this page is a work in progress!
Rocky Mountain Bristlecone Pine Investigations
One area of my research concerns Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata) and the extraction of climate and envirnomental information from this long-lived tree species. My initial work was part of the proposal, Flavors of Southwestern Hydroclimatic Extremes, funded by the National Science Foundation P2C2 program (Award # 1702271, with co-PIs Julie Cole and Tim Shanahan). My part of this project investigated the potential for reconstructions of climate from bristlecone pine that extended several millennia, overlapping in time with the longer proxy records that were part of this project (speleothems and lake sediments). Graduate student Will Tintor developed this part of the project for his dissertation. His first paper surveyed existing Rocky Mountain bristlecone chronologies and investigated the climate information these provide (Tintor and Woodhouse 2021). The second paper highlighted the use of the Vaganov-Shaskin proxy system model to simulate tree growth and identify elevation-related thresholds for tree-growth sensitivity to temperature. The third paper developed a reconstruction of spring hydroclimate, and used it with an existing reconstruction of snowpack from Pederson et al. (2011) to evaluate the impact of winter and spring hydroclimatic conditions on Rio Grande headwaters streamflow (Woodhouse and Tintor, in review).
The currently funded project builds on this work, with a focus on collecting samples from tree line in order to develop a reconstruction of past temperature (Reconstructing Southern Rocky Mountains Warm Season Temperature for the Past 2000 Years; NSF P2C2 Award # 2202406, with co-PI Cody Routson and post doc Alex Nolin). We’ve had two very productive field seasons, working mostly at sites near Antora Peak, north of the San Luis Valley, and preliminary results, which Alex presented at AGU 2023, are quite promising.
Missouri River Climate, Hydroclimate, and Streamflow Reconstruction
This NSF-funded project (P2C2 program, Collaborative Research: Multi-Century Perspectives on Current and Future Flow in the Lower Missouri River Basin, Award Number 2002060, with Erika Wise, Ed Cook, Matt Dannenberg, Greg Pederson, and Greg McCabe) built on a prior project that focused on the upper Missouri River basin (e.g., Martin et al. 2019, 2021). In this project, the goal was to general high-quality, long-term records of past streamflow in the lower Missouri River Basin by integrating gage records, modeled hydrology, and several complementary dendrochronology reconstruction approaches to reconstruct water-year and seasonal streamflow with a focus on improved estimates of past flow extremes.
To date, we have updated key tree-ring chronology collections across and proximal to the entire Missouri River basin, and have used several different reconstructions approaches to develop reconstructions of the Missouri River gage at Hermann MO, near the mouth of the river. The geography and hydoclimatology of this basin are complex, with surface water supplies coming from different regions in different parts of the year. Consequently, it is unlike any other basin for which I’ve generated reconstructions. However, our different reconstruction approaches have yielded results that are surprisingly similar, lending confidence to the robustness of this lower Missouri River streamflow reconstruction. We are starting to analyze the reconstruction, which extends to 1360, with a focus on floods years as this is a particular interest of the Army Corps of Engineer, which whom we are hoping to collaborate.
Cultivating Equitable Responses to Increased Aridity in the US Southwest: The Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS)
The goal of the CLIMAS program is to undertake climate-related research that meets the needs of practitioners, decision makers, and stakeholders. A key part of the program is to do collaborative research that is driven by the needs of stakeholders, which is quite different from the way traditional academic research is done. Within the current CLIMAS project, there are three main themes and associated research areas: Aridity, Heat, and Water Availability, with Climate Services and Health as cross cutting themes.
I lead the Water Availability group. Our current focus is on understanding the connection between surface water supplies and climate, and climate change in northern New Mexico within the Rio Grande basin. Our goal is to determine if and how this type of information may be useful to water stakeholders. We are targeting rural communities (including acequias, pueblos, tribal communities) in northern New Mexico to address questions, concerns, and needs related to surface water availability. Climate change and climate variability, in combination with a host of other conditions (including an endangered acequia culture, water adjudication and settlements, and water planning efforts) are challenges faced by these small communities
In the first year of this 5-year project, we have educated ourselves through surveying and reading peer-reviewed literature as well as other types of reports to gain a better understanding the social, cultural, economic, environmental, political contexts of water use and if/how climate science plays a role for stakeholders in this region. Other activities have including networking to explore potential partnerships and collaborators, and exploratory climate/streamflow analyses for relevant watersheds.
Photo by Gigi Owen
PAST PROJECTS
CLIMAS: Collaboratively Assessing Critical Social-Ecological System Buffers to Help Build Regional Climate Resilience: The Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) (NOAA NA17OAR4310288)
My part of this project focused on Lower Colorado River Basin hydroclimate, and the upper Gila River in particular. Use this link to explore the project.
Streamflow Reconstructions for California
In collaboration and with support from the California Department of Water Resources (CADWR), my colleagues Dave Meko, Ramzi Touchan, and Erica Bigio and I, along with a number of graduate students, have developed reconstruction of annual streamflow and precipitation for rivers and basins important to CADWR. These included rivers in the Klamath, Sacramento and San Joaquin basins in the northern part of the California. In southern California, reconstructions were developed for total water year precipitation (Ojai, Lake Arrowhead, San Gabriel Dam, and Cuyamaca) and water year streamflow (Arroyo Seco and Santa Ana River), along with a reconstruction of Kern River streamflow in the southern Sierra Nevada. See the reports below for details on these projects.
Final Report for Klamath, Sacramento, and San Joaquin streamflow reconstructions
Final Report for Southern California reconstructions, Appendices, and Guidebook for Water Managers
