Ecosystem water balance and ecological drought patterns under historical and future climate conditions for the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) Landscape

These data were compiled for research pertaining to the effects of stand density treatments on growth rates in semi-arid, ponderosa pine forests. Also, these data examined how the planned restoration treatments in the Four Forests Restoration Initiative (4FRI), the largest forest restoration project being implemented in the United States, would alter landscape-scale patterns of forest growth and drought vulnerability throughout the 21st century. Using drought-growth relationships developed within the landscape, we considered a suite of climate and thinning scenarios and estimated both average forest growth and the proportion of years with extremely low growth as a measure of vulnerability to long-term decline. The severity of drought and the magnitude of future growth declines experienced by these stands is influenced by the thinning treatments. These data consist of field measurements from Terrestrial Ecosystem Surveys of the Coconino and Kaibab National Forests and other sources including Downscaled CMIP3 and CMIP5 Climate and Hydrology Projections. SOILWAT2 was used to model treatment-specific interactions between forest BA, soil conditions, and climate, and to simulate soil moisture. The 4FRI landscape is located on the Coconino and Kaibab National Forests in Northern Arizona. The landscape is dominated by ponderosa pine forest types, and ranges from 1780 to 3850 m elevation with a mean of 2190 meters.