A Synthesis Center for Paleoenvironmental Records of Extreme Events

Floods, droughts, wildfires, earthquakes, other extreme environmental events pose persistent and growing risks to ecosystems, infrastructure, and human life. A deeper understanding of the timing and severity of extreme events provides opportunities to prepare, adapt and mitigate the societal consequences of. While modern observational systems have recorded the extreme events of the past century or two, they do not provide a full record of the historic frequency and magnitude of such events.

Paleoenvironmental data from natural archives, such as sediments, ice cores, tree rings, and corals can extend the record of events back centuries to millennia. Such data are already being used to inform public policy, infrastructure design, and emergency planning across the United States. For example, tree-ring reconstructions of past hydrologic conditions have informed Bureau of Reclamation planning for the Colorado River and resource strategies at water utilities. Despite its potential to inform disaster preparedness, the use of paleoenvironmental data are hindered by many challenges, including a diversity of analytical methods, decentralized storage, and limited digital discoverability.

At the request of Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, this report evaluates potential functions and criteria for a new center for paleoenvironmental records of extreme events. The report's authoring committee concludes that while there is a need for new physical storage and better coordination of digital repositories and databases, the most urgent unmet need is an enhanced capacity for synthesis and translation - the processes that transform data into usable knowledge. The report provides a vision for a new center dedicated to synthesis and translation with the mission to help improve societal resilience to future extreme events.