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Tree-rings reveal a forest drought vulnerability paradox: larger root-zone storage capacity intensifies drought impacts


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Created: Jul 02, 2026 at 9:44 p.m. (UTC)
Last updated: Jul 13, 2026 at 7:50 p.m. (UTC)
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Abstract

Multi-year droughts are known to negatively impact Mediterranean montane forest productivity. However, the role of subsurface moisture storage capacity remains unclear. It is generally thought that larger root-zone moisture storage capacity leads to greater drought resistance, particularly where moisture storage across years can maintain vegetation water use. An emerging hypothesis is that smaller moisture storage capacity, that is replenished despite below-average precipitation, leads to greater forest drought resistance. To examine how forest productivity varied across landscapes with distinct moisture storage capacity during a multi-year drought, we leverage three pine forest sites within 4.5 km in southern Sierra Nevada, California with similar climate and species (i.e., ponderosa or Jeffrey pine) but distinct root-zone moisture storage capacities (310, 590, 970 mm). At each site, we compared new tree-ring chronologies and estimated moisture storage dynamics using a water balance approach. During California's 2012–2015 drought, the site with the largest moisture storage capacity had the greatest decline in growth, while the site with the smallest storage maintained or exceeded average growth throughout the drought. Forest dieback also corresponded with larger moisture storage capacity. Together, these findings reveal a forest drought vulnerability paradox: larger moisture storage capacity can amplify rather than buffer pine growth suppression during multi-year drought likely because trees acclimated to abundant moisture supplies are more vulnerable to incomplete replenishment.

Subject Keywords

Coverage

Spatial

Coordinate System/Geographic Projection:
WGS 84 EPSG:4326
Coordinate Units:
Decimal degrees
North Latitude
37.1459°
East Longitude
-119.1322°
South Latitude
37.0358°
West Longitude
-119.2400°

Temporal

Start Date:
End Date:

Content

Additional Metadata

Name Value
readme.txt This repository contains several folders with various types of data. The summary of each folder is included below. Each folder contains a separate readme file that details the contents in each folder. The folder “climate_ET_data” contains precipitation, air temperature, vapor pressure deficit, and evapotranspiration data for each site. The folder “tree_ring_data” contains the tree ring chronology data for each site. The folder “root_zone_deficit_data” contains the calculated root zone moisture deficit values for each site. The file “TreeRing_Metadata_19Oct24.csv” contains the tree core id, species, tree diameter at breast height, tree location, and nearest neighbor distance for each site. The folder "figure_code" contains python or Matlab code used to generate each of the figures in the main text.
Figure_code Figure_code folder will be populated when manuscript figures are finalized post initial review.

How to Cite

Donaldson, A. M. (2026). Tree-rings reveal a forest drought vulnerability paradox: larger root-zone storage capacity intensifies drought impacts, HydroShare, http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/774c9645059942d399bc6d1bcbc4215e

This resource is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
CC-BY

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