date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:11:27 -0400 from: Brian Luckman subject: RE: Divergence Project to: "'Tom Melvin'" , BRIFFA Dear Tom and Keith, That is great news- both that you have got the project and that Keith is recovering well. As I said in earlier correspondence with Keith this is an essential project for the discipline and I fully support it. However, at this time I have no active dendroclimate students here (nor do I expect any future ones as I am already almost two years post retirement and renewing year by year) so I would not expect to contribute significantly in terms of analysis or techniques. However, over the last 10 years we have collected almost 100 new spruce and fir sites in the Yukon and Northern B.C. that would be of some interest to you in the project. These have been the focus of a master's project analyzing 20+ sites along the Dempster Highway that bracket Gordon's TTHH site and I sent a copy of this M.Sc. Thesis to Jonathan Barichivitch earlier this summer (when I last contacted Keith). The analysis was very simple and looked at whether there were differences in the correlations with climate data from Dawson for the 1900-1950 and 1951-2000 periods. I also have a doctoral student who is working with the entire network but that work is proceeding very slowly and he has experienced serious family crises, is currently on leave and I am not optimistic that he will finish. I am therefore prepared to release these data to other projects as, having gone through 6 field seasons to collect it I would hate to see the work go to waste. Accordingly, about 9 months ago I sent all of these data to Martin Wilmking for his project and have no objection to sending you the same data (I assume you would want the raw data). Alternatively, based on your address listing, I assume Martin is likely part of this project also and you might want to check how far he has progressed with the analysis of that data and maybe he would share any results from that work. I don't know what state his work is at. As I am not likely to be doing much additional dendroclimate work I could, if you so wish, send you other data from the Canadian Cordillera (Picea and Larix) which includes some relatively long chronologies but they end in the early to mid 1990s. Let me know what you would like. I expect to be in Finland though, as I will probably be contributing to a dendrogeomorph session on Natural Hazards, I am unlikely to have anything particularly new to say on the Divergence issue. If I were to participate and present it would likely simply be based on the master's work that you may already have seen- though I would obviously attend any such discussion. So, that's the state of play here. Great to know Keith is back in the system and the project is a go. Having not heard about it for so long I was worried that maybe it didn't fly- but it has. Let me know how I can contribute. Cheers Brian -----Original Message----- From: Tom Melvin [mailto:t.m.melvin@uea.ac.uk] Sent: September 11, 2009 9:32 AM To: esper@wsl.ch; samuli.helama@helsinki.fi; hakan.grudd@natgeo.su.se; kurt.nicolussi@uibk.ac.at; Michael_Pisaric@carleton.ca; wilmking@UNI-GREIFSWALD.DE; eavaganov@forest.akadem.ru; ben.smith@nateko.lu.se; drdendro@ldeo.columbia.edu; luckman@uwo.ca; mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu; rdd@ldeo.columbia.edu; rjsw@st-andrews.ac.uk Cc: Keith; Tim Subject: Divergence Project Dear Colleagues and Friends, We are writing now to inform you that our application to the UK NERC for support to investigate the so-called "Divergence" phenonomen in temperature-sensitive trees over a range of geographical and ecological situations has formally been approved. This message is addressed to those of you who generously offered support and indicated willingness to collaborate with us in this work. We were and are grateful and excited by the prospect of our collaboration. Most of you will know that I was diagnosed a few months back as having a kidney tumour. I have since then had an operation to remove the offending organ and, providing all continues to go well, I intend to be back at work in October. The formal start date of the project will be 1st May 2010 and Tom will be paid full time for the 30 month duration of this contract. In the meantime we are anxious to establish a close working relationship between ourselves and all of you - but ideally a collaborative network involving us all. The first idea we had was to organise a small "forum" on our website so that we can maintain contact, discuss problems, keep each other informed of progress, and exchange ideas, data and software. It would help us if Tom's dendroclimatic software, including some novel techniques, was tried out and discussed (maybe as beta testing) before we make it openly available. We also would like you opinion on the suggestion of holding a session on "divergence" at the next International Tree Ring Conference to be held in Rovaniemi in June next year - would any of you be willing to contribute to such a session? Anyway, this is to let you know that we were very serious in expressing our wish that this project be a collaborative effort with all of you. Thanks for your help in getting this project and thanks for your collaborative support. Best wishes Keith and Tom 10-Sept-2009 Dr. Tom Melvin Climatic Research Unit University of East Anglia Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K. Phone: +44-1603-593161 Fax: +44-1603-507784