Trevor Porter wins Best Ph.D. Student Paper

Congratulations to Trevor Porter, one of our Ph.D. students, who has been awarded the “Best Ph.D. Student Paper Award, Paleoenvironmental Change” at the Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting which was held inWashington, D.C. in April 2010. The Paleoenvironmental Change Specialty Group Student Paper competition is held annually at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting to recognize the best student presentation with a focus on paleoenvironmental change research. The AAG annual meeting in Washington D.C. in April 2010 was the second time the PEC Specialty Group Ph.D. student paper competition was offered.  The winner of the competition receives a $100 gift certificate from Pearson Education Publishers.

The title of Trevor’s paper was “Insights on ‘divergence’ from a regional study of tree growth in Old Crow Flats, northwestern Canada”.  Trevor’s paper explored relations between tree-ring growth and climate across a newly developed network of twenty-three white spruce sites in Old Crow Flats, northern Yukon.  Tree-ring growth at boreal treeline is commonly influenced by growing season temperatures, however, in some parts of northwestern North America (NWNA), a growing number of studies have shown that the temperature-growth relations have not been stationary during the 20th century (known as the Divergence Phenomenon).  His research provides evidence supporting the notion that temperature-growth divergence in Old Crow Flats, and other adjacent parts of NWNA, began as early as the mid- to late-19th century and, thus, is not a product of the 20th century.  These findings support the possibility that divergence was initiated by a major atmospheric circulation change that affected parts of NWNA around 1850 which likely led to a reduction in effective moisture available to these forests.