I am reading a long article in TNYT about water, primarily conditions
in the US West. Something just jolted me: "But recent studies of tree
rings, in which academics drill core samples from the oldest
Ponderosa pines or Douglas firs they can find in order to determine
moisture levels hundreds of years ago, indicate that the dry times of
the 1950s were mild and brief compared with other historical
droughts. The latest research effort, published in the journal
Geophysical Research Letters in late May, identified the existence of
an epochal Southwestern megadrought that, if it recurred, would prove
calamitous."
What occurs is that the current drought in NW Georgia, east
Tennessee, and part of the Carolinas and, I believe, Alabama, is not
an anomaly--it is a recurring cycle--and we should plan to handle
such conditions.
I have long read of how "virgin" timber was superior to what we have
today. The reason is that the growth rings are smaller because there
was less water when those trees were growing a hundred-to-three
hundred years ago.