date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:52:37 +0100
from: Rob Wilson <rjsw@st-andrews.ac.uk>
subject: NERC Consortium grant
to: "Rosanne D'Arrigo" <rdd@ldeo.columbia.edu>, Edward Cook <drdendro@ldeo.columbia.edu>, Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>, gondwanadendro@gmail.com, Sandy Tudhope <sandy.tudhope@ed.ac.uk>

<x-flowed>
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



</x-flowed>

Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\NERC-New model.ppt"

Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\2009 08 24 Consortium_Concept_TASOC_submitted2.doc"
