ForDRI: A new Forest Drought Response Indicator
Abstract
The Forest Drought Indicator (ForDRI) is a new, experimental drought-monitoring tool designed to identify forest drought conditions. The goal of ForDRI research is to identify when trees are experiencing sufficient stress to start limiting water loss because such actions in turn limit tree growth and increase susceptibility to a variety of other biotic and abiotic factors. ForDRI was developed by the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) in collaboration with USDA's Climate hubs and Forest Service. Two distinct approaches are being tested to integrate climate- and satellite-based drought indices that are useful in monitoring drought stress in trees. These methods rely on: (i) multivariate regression tree (MRT), and (ii) principal component analysis (PCA) based modelling techniques. Using these two techniques, we have developed an experimental ForDRI tool integrating satellite, climate, and biophysical data to help in characterizing forest drought response at short- and long-term (years) time scales.
Comparing the climate records with the tree-ring data for the same period can provide valuable information for ForDRI evaluation. Thus, the ForDRI values were compared with the tree-ring widths (TRW) and basal area increment (BAI) for the same period. Four national parks at northeastern United States that have long historical tree-ring and phenology data were selected to evaluate ForDRI. These four parks are Prince William Forest Park, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, Catoctin Mountain Park, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The tree ring data covered from 1984 to 2013. The preliminary evaluation showed good (and highly significant) correlation between the ForDRI values and tree-ring data (based on either TRW or BAI) at selected sites in the four National Parks. For example, the experimental ForDRI method showed relatively high correlations (R-squared > 0.56) with ring width in Liriodendron Tulipifera (Tulip tree). In general, the preliminary analysis of the correlations between ForDRI and tree-ring data are very encouraging for forest drought assessment and monitoring. The tool is expected to improve drought-monitoring efforts, specifically addressing the gap for better monitoring of the drought impacts on forests that may not be captured with current drought monitoring tools.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.H14E..03T
- Keywords:
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- 1812 Drought;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1817 Extreme events;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGY