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Shifting Climate Sensitivities, Shifting Paradigms: Tree-Ring Science in a Dynamic World

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The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Physical Geography

Abstract

In the field of tree-ring science, findings of unstable growth responses by trees to climate have spurred self-reflection and generated debate, with significant implications for climate change politics, science, and discourse. To interrogate this issue, we bring together quantitative data on climate-growth relationships in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, and qualitative survey data on the practices and perspectives of tree-ring scientists. Our tree-ring data compel us to consider often-overlooked socioecological factors that may influence trees’ sensitivities to climate, including atmospheric pollution and historical changes in land use and ecosystem structure and function. Survey data contextualize our analyses within broader changes in the field, demonstrating that climate-growth relationships are increasingly understood as fluid, non-linear, and contingent rather than stable and fixed.

The uniformitarian principle is assumed in all dendrochronological inferences, and, as in all sciences of the past, if this principle does not hold, no conclusions regarding the past can be made.

—Harold C. Fritts 1976, Tree Rings and Climate

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Christine Biermann

  2. Department of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Henri D. Grissino-Mayer

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  1. Christine Biermann
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Rebecca Lave

  2. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Christine Biermann

  3. Université de Lausanne, Gryon, Switzerland

    Stuart N. Lane

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Biermann, C., Grissino-Mayer, H.D. (2018). Shifting Climate Sensitivities, Shifting Paradigms: Tree-Ring Science in a Dynamic World. In: Lave, R., Biermann, C., Lane, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Physical Geography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71461-5_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71461-5_10

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