Water Stewardship Information Sources

Citation Pitman, K.J., and Smith, D.J. 2012. Tree-ring derived Little Ice Age temperature trends from the central British Columbia Coast Mountains, Canada. Quaternary Research 78(3):417-426.
Organization Uvic
URL http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003358941200110X
Abstract/Description or Keywords Most glaciers in the British Columbia Coast Mountains reached their maximum Holocene extent during the Little Ice Age. Early- and late-Little Ice Age intervals of expansion and retreat fluctuations describe a mass-balance response to changing climates. Although existing dendroclimatic records provide insights into these climatic fluctuations over the last 400 yr, their short durations prohibit evaluation of early-Little Ice Age climate variability. To extend the duration of these records, submerged coarse woody debris salvaged from a high-elevation lake was cross-dated to living chronologies. The resulting chronology provides the opportunity to reconstruct a regional June–July air-temperature anomaly record extending from AD 1225 to 2010. The reconstruction shows that the intervals AD 1350–1420, 1475–1550, 1625–1700 and 1830–1940 characterized distinct periods of below-average June–July temperature followed by periods of above-average temperature. Our reconstruction provides the first annually resolved insights into high-elevation climates spanning the Little Ice Age in this region and indicates that Little Ice Age moraine stabilization corresponds to persistent intervals of warmer-than-average temperatures. We conclude that coarse woody debris submerged in high-elevation lakes has considerable potential for developing lengthy proxy climate records, and we recommend that researchers focus attention on this largely ignored paleoclimatic archive.

Keywords
Dendrochronology; Dendroclimatology; Tree-rings; Coarse woody debris; Submerged; Little Ice Age; Coast Mountains; British Columbia; Mountain hemlock
Information Type article
Regional Watershed Central Coast
Sub-watershed if known
Aquifer #
Comments
Project status complete
Contact Name Dan Smith
Contact Email [email protected]