Projects / Programmes
Paleoclimate data enhances drought predicition in the W Balkan region
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 4.01.01 |
Biotechnical sciences |
Forestry, wood and paper technology |
Forest - forestry |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| B430 |
Biomedical sciences |
Sylviculture, forestry, forestry technology |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 4.01 |
Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences |
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries |
tree growth, drought prediction, dendrochronology, modelling, Western Balkan
Researchers (12)
Organisations (2)
Abstract
The climate of Mediterranean is highly sensitive to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Droughts in recent decades have strongly impacted the region, and increasing aridity features prominently in General Circulation Models (GCM) projections over the next century. In this region of limited water resources, reliable climate predictions on seasonal-to-decadal timescales are essential in developing effective strategies for mitigating environmental and socio-economic impacts of climate variability and change. Main goals of the project are:
Develop an annual resolution spatiotemporal “atlas” of past hydroclimatic variability for the W Balkan region on seasonal-to-decadal timescales from palaeoclimatic data.
Spatio-temporal analysis of drought occurrence in the Western Balkan region
Identification and reconstruction of atmospheric mechanisms causing drought in the Western Balkan region
Validation of available climate model simulations in terms of realistically reproducing the observed climate variability in last several decades
Determine the impacts of climate change on drought occurrence in the Western Balkan region
Provide information on hydroclimatic variability that will enhance our knowledge of climate predictability and enable stakeholders to increase readiness of society to respond effectively to extreme hydroclimatic variations.
We will develop a spatially-complete, multi-century to millennial-length gridded reconstruction of climatic variables for Slovenia and W Balkan region for characterizing natural patterns of hydroclimatic variability. Long reconstruction of past climatic conditions are critical to explore longer interaction between the local climate and large-scale oceanic and atmospheric changes over the centuries, since the instrumental data are not long enough to be able to detect them in the long-term changes in climate. By comparing our reconstructions with others that are made for the northern hemisphere, particularly the Alps and the Carpathians, and Asia Minor, we can analyse the impact of global circulations in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Black Sea on the climate of the studied area.
Drought reconstructions will provide a perspective on climate variability to stakeholders (managers, planners, and policy makers) that will help reduce vulnerability and aid in the implementation of robust and short to medium term plans to achieve the sustainability of water and other natural resources in the region. We will provide information on the probability of droughts and wet periods in Slovenia and W Balkan region that is easily accessed through web based tools. This will help to translate knowledge from the scientific domain to the socio-economic domain and findings will enable stakeholders to make short and medium term decisions based on deeper understanding of the drought variability in the future.
Significance for science
Our work in the W Balkan region is very important for Slovenian and international research community as W Balkan region is poorly investigated, even though all climate change projections predict increase in temperature and decline in precipitation for this region. Within the project we set complex goals to investigate temporal and spatial occurrence of drought in the W Balkan region; we investigated climatic background for drought occurrence and drought frequency in the last 350 - 500 years. We collected information and knowledge to evaluate climate change predictions for the W Balkan (including recommendations for policy makers, planners and managers). By the end of the project, we produced the following achievements: 1. We developed new multicentury chronologies for tree-ring widths – more than 600 years long chronologies for Bosnian pine, and more than 800 years long chronology for Macedonian pine (from Albania), 350+ years long oak chronology from Serbia, 300+ years long chronology for silver fir and 400+ years for beech. Fact, that we manage to compile such long tree-ring chronologies from living trees is astonishing, as old growth forest and forest at the upper timber line in the W Balkans are quickly disappearing due to regular and illegal cut. 2. Very long (500+) stable carbon isotope chronologies for Bosnian and Macedonian pine – this are the first iso-chronologies for the two species in the World and 200+ years long iso-chronologies for oak in the Pannonian lowland. 3. New knowledge on inatraanual dynamics of radial growth of pine in the W Balkan region with identification of key factors that affects / limits radial growth of the trees. This are the first data available for the region, there is no other data on cambium activity available for the region but ours. We think this is a significant contribution to science in Slovenia and wider. 4. We identified key meteorological factors for the growth of different tree species and developed models describing dependency between climate and tree growth 5. We reconstructed climate of different parts of the W Balkan for at least 350 years back in time and setup the basis for spatial modelling of drought in the W Balkans. 6. Spatial reconstruction has been verified with independently developed documentary data from archives in Vienna and Graz, as well as from Serbia. Historical documents offer description rather than numbers about climate in particular year or season, for many years in the past (e.g. good harvest, wet summer, dry/ hot summer, good wine year, …). 7. On pilot region in Slovenia we reconstructed river flow of Rižana river with the help of tree-ring widths, additionally we studied which tree species (pine or oak) has bigger effect on water retention. This knowledge could be used for a forest management to optimize mixture of forest species and amount of water available at the spring of Rižana river (which is mostly used by industry and population in this region). 8. We developed spatio-temporal atlas of drought over the W Balkan region and SE Europe for the period from 1560 till present. 9. Chronologies constructed within this project were used to generate spatio-temporal drought atlas for the whole Europe (in cooperation with colleagues from USA) 10. Within the project we generated a huge amount of new data – new, long tree-ring proxy chronologies (tree-ring widths and stable isotopes), reconstructions, simulations, spatial models, … They will all be available to scientific community upon the completion of the project and publication of results.
Significance for the country
Slovenia has always been viewed as the country rich in water resources, where the supply of drinking water is not considered to be a problem. Almost complete absence of rainfall, which occurred between October 2011 and March 2012 or in summer months in 2013 showed that Slovenia could easily find themselves in serious difficulties regarding the supply of drinking water. A good example of the serious difficulties in the supply of healthy drinking water was Notranjska (winter 2011/2012), where the karst water resources almost dried up, while remaining wells were contaminated with faecal bacteria and water need to be transported from elsewhere. This demands to change the attitude towards the healthy drinking water and requires development of proper strategies to response to drought occurrence. In the centre of the project was reconstruction of drought for the territory of Slovenia with special emphasis on Slovenian coastal region where local population and economy heavily depend on the availability of clean drinking water and where the only source of water are karstic wells. In this region, drought and its influence on tree growth was reconstructed using tree-rings widths of two typical tree species in this region – pine and oak; in addition, results from a large-scale drought reconstructions for W Balkan were used, to emphasise that drought in the region is not only a local phenomenon. To predict what could happen in Slovenia if temperature rise and precipitation decrease we applied knowledge gained in the W Balkan on a relatively small, but well defined catchment of River Rižana, where we reconstruct effect of precipitation and vegetation on the flow of river Rižana. River Rižana is the main water source for the supply of the entire Slovenian coast with drinking water. Research showed that river flow heavily depends on the type of vegetation that predominates water catchment. Even though forest is very beneficial for the quality of the water it also needs water to survive. The amount of water used by the forest depends on the species composition. Our research showed that two main species, black pine and oak, in the ecosystems of the water catchment have two, completely different water use strategies. While the first one quickly adapts to water stress by conserving water, the other doesn’t. Research showed that, from the stand point of water supply, pines consume less water and as such they are better choice if we want to have more water passing through the ecosystem to the spring. However, pines are under question considering long-term prospects since they are sensitive to forest fires and invasive fungi. The proposed project used innovative approaches to reconstruct the occurrence of drought in the regions considered to be more vulnerable as Slovenia and knowledge about the incidence and duration of droughts was transferred to Slovenia. We got the information, what can happen in Slovenia, if temperature will rise and the climate conditions will become like those in the W Balkans. With a 350+ years long drought reconstruction for the W Balkan we clearly demonstrated the long-term variability of the climate in the studied region as well as frequency of drought. This is important contribution to the better understanding of the drought phenomenon and to the readiness of the society to respond to extreme weather events. Our results provide theoretical frameworks, that are currently missing, to achieve goals of the established guidelines in the “Adaptation of Slovenian agriculture and forestry to climate change”. The results of our study, in which we analysed past climate variability, are a significant contribution to greater awareness of extreme weather events. Results will have a major impact on local communities and decision makers. They will also help managers, planners and policy makers to prepare strategies and to make short and medium term decisions based on deeper understanding of the drought variability in the future.
Most important scientific results
Annual report
2014,
2015,
final report
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Annual report
2014,
2015,
final report
