Deep root-zone controls on forest productivity and drought recovery

After drought ends, forests do not always recover as quickly as rainfall does. For example, trees may continue to grow slowly, and streamflow may remain lower than expected even when wet conditions return. The uncertainty underlying these delayed responses has implications for projections of water supply and management of forests. This project will improve understanding of forest response to drought, support student research training, and inform forest management practices. Several mechanisms may explain prolonged drought impacts, including lasting physiological changes in trees and delayed replenishment of deep moisture accessible to roots. Most field measurements capture only shallow soil moisture, even though roots often rely on water stored meters belowground. This project will combine a rare multiyear record of deep moisture measurements before, during, and after drought with new tree-ring records as well as publicly available tree-ring chronologies linked to satellite-derived water balance data. Analyses of these datasets will test whether delayed deep moisture recovery explains prolonged forest impacts and the circumstances where tree-ring records show sensitivity to drought legacies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2549574 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Daniella Rempe | Institution: University of Texas at Austin, AUSTIN, TX | Award Amount: $483,157 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2549574 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2549574.html