date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:52:37 +0100 from: Rob Wilson subject: NERC Consortium grant to: "Rosanne D'Arrigo" , Edward Cook , Phil Jones , gondwanadendro@gmail.com, Sandy Tudhope Hi Ed, Rosanne and Jonathan, Earlier this week we had our first consortium meeting to bash out a more clear vision for the consortium proposal. A schematic of what was decided is attached along with the original 2 pager. Whether this is clearer than the 2 pager, I am not so sure. Anyway, Phil is leading the Observational/Proxy Workpackage, although this is divided into different obs/proxy sub-sets lead by different specialists in each relevant field. I am supposed to be in charge of the Trees!! The project, although with still a focus on the Tropics and Southern Hemisphere also has a full global focus as well. The main phenomena that will be studied are ENSO, ITCZ movements, SAM, Monsoon and the Little Ice Age. The latter LIA focus being driven by carbon cycle issues that Peter Cox wants to push. We have until October 19th to draft some initial text for each work package and so this e-mail is essentially a heads up for us to start discussion about what possible things would be feasible/desirable from a dendro point of view. As this is a Consortium bid and we will have many project partners, we need to ensure that the project is integrated between work packages and groups. As I see it: 1. ENSO - driven from coral records (old and new) and TEXMEX trees, although if new tree-ring records (mainland Oz, New Zealand, Indonesia, South Amercia etc) could help, then it is may be possible to write in for funds for sampling new areas. 2. ITCZ - corals and non-annual lake sediment work. I doubt trees will help with this. 3. SAM - trees from South America, New Zealand and Tassy, along with ice core data (old and new). 4. Monsoon - I guess you guys are the specialists in this already. Did you have a modelling component in your NSF project already? If not, then this would be one area where the NERC proposal could be mutually beneficial. 5. LIA - essentially, we are looking at yet another large scale temperature reconstruction. Peter Cox used the Moberg recon for his analysis, but we need to be careful as Dave Frank's ensemble recon paper may make this analysis defunct. Keith and Tom are already funded through NERC to re-process NH tree-ring data and this could be expanded to cover all relevant data around the world. We are also not restricting ourselves to just temperature, so study hydroclimatic changes during the LIA and after will also be important and so the drought atlas (US, EURO etc) work will also be important here as well. anyway - focusing on the above, I wonder if we could bounce around ideas about what would be needed to expand the current data-sets to enable us to better reconstruct/understand these phenomena. I will e-mail Ricardo and Antonio separately, but focusing on New Zealand and Australia and the Indo-Pacific region, what obviously improvements can be made? Ultimately, we want to derive 500-yr long climatically sensitive tree-ring chronologies for as many locations in the tropics and southern hemisphere as possible. Length should not be too much of a problem, but currently, the parameter of choice is ring-width. Is it worth considering other parameters like MXD or blue intensity that could help boost r2 values. Is this an opportunity to update networks to present in some regions (e.g. Tasmania?) Notice also on the right side of the figure we have Tom Melvin's name against tree modelling. This essentially is focussing on forward mechanistic modelling of trees. This might not be so important for those chronologies that show a reasonable linear relationships with climate, but for those species with a more complex response with climate (i.e. non Huon pine species in Tasmania), such growth modelling may allow us to invert such models to recreate tree-growth using climate model output etc etc. This e-mail is getting rather long, so I will hold off for now. However, any ideas and feedback would be very welcome at this pre-writing stage. Remember, that we are looking for work for both post-docs and post-grads regards to all Rob -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Rob Wilson Lecturer in Physical Geography School of Geography & Geosciences University of St Andrews St Andrews. FIFE KY16 9AL Scotland. U.K. Tel: +44 01334 463914 Fax: +44 01334 463949 http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/gg/people/wilson/ ".....I have wondered about trees. They are sensitive to light, to moisture, to wind, to pressure. Sensitivity implies sensation. Might a man feel into the soul of a tree for these sensations? If a tree were capable of awareness, this faculty might prove useful. " "The Miracle Workers" by Jack Vance ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\NERC-New model.ppt" Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\2009 08 24 Consortium_Concept_TASOC_submitted2.doc"