400 Hundred Years of Climate in the Southern Appalachian Mountains

Principal Investigator: Christopher J. Crawford

The Southern Appalachian topography results in Southeastern USA climatic anomaly. Annually, this region experiences a range of climatic changes including deep cold troughs plunging equatorially and abundant moisture availability from to the Gulf of Mexico and western Atlantic. In more recent years, sustained drought has plagued this region sparking public policy concerns and a demand for longer-term knowledge of past climate variation. Over the past two years, I have been developing a regional network of high-elevation oak tree-ring chronologies to assess the fidelity of reconstructing mountain climate mechanisms, processes, and forcing. Additionally, the over arching project goal is not only to reconstruct past climate, but also to understand how climate has impacted and shaped Southern Appalachia culture in pre-post European settlement eras.