Tucker, C.S.; Trepanier, J.C.; Harley, G.L., and DeLong, K.L., 2018. Recording Tropical Cyclone Activity from 1909 to 2014 along the Northern Gulf of Mexico using Maritime Slash Pine Trees (Pinus elliottii var. elliottii Engelm.). The temporally incomplete tropical cyclone (TC) observational record limits the understanding of recurrence intervals and the impacts of repeated TCs on coastal ecosystems. Growth of maritime trees near the Gulf of Mexico may be affected by high winds, precipitation, and storm surges from TCs. Proxy records, such as tree growth recorded in annual ring widths, can be used to extend TC records temporally but must be verified with the observational record first. This study develops chronologies of total ring width (TRW), earlywood ring width (ERW), and latewood ring width (LRW) from slash pine (Pinus elliottii var. elliottii Engelm.) trees located 2 km from an open saltwater bay in the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in coastal Mississippi, U.S.A. These chron...

Tropical cyclone (TC) rainfall amounts are compared from 1950–2017 for Houston, Texas and Miami, Florida to estimate the risk of TC rain in both cities. Following the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in 2017, concern has risen over the future of raininess in these locations. Per-event rainfall amounts are aggregated using tracks taken from HURDAT, time-of-rain gathered from National Weather Service daily weather maps, and rainfall totals taken from airport monitoring stations. Risk analysis tools include descriptive statistics, time series, and return frequencies for Houston and Miami, and spatially interpolated surfaces for Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The season duration is longer in Miami than in Houston. The uppermost rainfall events in the distribution for Houston show a significant increase through time, suggesting the most intense rainfall events are becoming worse for Houston. The expected return frequency for a Harvey-like event (940 mm) in Houston is every 230 years, on average, and the 90th percentile rain of 286 mm is expected once every 17 years (11–29; 90% significance). The expected return frequency for an Irene-like event (261 mm—maximum for location) in Miami is every 173 years, on average, and the 90th percentile rain of 167 mm is expected once every 11 years (7–17; 90% significance). Results show a substantial difference between Houston and Miami TC rainfall climatologies similar to the differences of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Though emergency management must be tailored for each TC, management for inland TC rainfall may be more applicable in Houston than in Miami.

Environmental education is key in solving environmental problems and for producing a future workforce capable of solving issues of climate change. Over the last two decades, the Coastal Roots Program at Louisiana State University (LSU) has reached more than 26,676 K-12 students in Louisiana to teach them environmental science and has brought them to restoration sites to plant 194,336 school-grown trees and grasses. The codirectors of Coastal Roots are continually searching for opportunities to enrich the experience of teachers and students in connecting school subjects, Coastal Roots, and stewardship. In school year 2018/19, students in five local schools entered a pilot program to learn how tree-ring science informs environmental science broadly. During their scheduled restoration planting trips, students were asked to collect the following tree data: tree cores, tree height, tree diameter, tree species, and global positioning system location points. Data were given to scientists at LSU for preliminary analysis, and graphical representation of the data were shown to the students for their interpretation. Results from this program indicate that bringing students into the field and teaching them a new scientific skill improved their understanding of environmental science and their role in coastal restoration, and tree-ring data showed significant correlations to various climate parameters in Louisiana. Additionally, we find that bringing this knowledge to teachers allows the knowledge to spread for multiple generations of students. Here we present tree-ring data from this project, lessons learned during the pilot program, advantages to student-based citizen science, and recommendations for similar programs.