Margaret Evans’ Tree‑Ring Research Shows a Warmer, Drier Arizona

What looks like pro­longed drought may actu­ally be something more per­man­ent in the South­w­est, a shift toward a drier baseline driven by rising tem­per­at­ures. Even when rain and snow return, the land­scape holds less water than it once did.

Trees exper­i­ence drought stress. Rivers pro­duce less water. Forests grow unhealthy and vul­ner­able to wild­fire. Nat­ive spe­cies suf­fer as the land­scape shifts. Snowpack shrinks. And the past stops work­ing as an indic­ator of the future.

“The big dif­fer­ence between the droughts we’re see­ing now com­pared to the droughts we saw in the 1900s, these are warmer droughts,” said Mar­garet Evans, a dendro­chrono­lo­gist at the Uni­versity of Ari­zona’s Labor­at­ory of TreeR­ing Research.

To read more, check it out here!

Margaret Evan's Team Page!