CREAFTalk with Mariano Morales: '600 years of droughts: insights from forests into climate variability and its links to ecological and social processes in South America'

This presentation explores a 600-year reconstruction of spatiotemporal drought variability in South America based on the South American Drought Atlas. Ecosystems and societies in the region are highly vulnerable to extreme hydroclimatic events, yet the lack of long-term, high-resolution records has limited understanding of their impacts. Using a network of over 285 tree-ring chronologies along the Andes, a drought index is reconstructed back to 1400. The methodological framework is presented, and the atlas’s potential for ecological and paleoethnoecological studies is discussed, including a case study from the Altiplano linking droughts with social conflict. These records provide crucial context for future hydroclimatic risks under climate change. 

Mariano Morales is a research scientist at CONICET, working at IANIGLA-CCT Mendoza. His scientific interests focus on paleoclimatic reconstructions using tree-ring analyses and the application of dendrochronology in ecological, archaeological, historical, and hydrological studies in the Central Andes and Patagonia. Current research includes the development of a South American Drought Atlas, examining its impacts on ecosystems and links with sociocultural changes during pre-Columbian and historical periods. He also develops networks of tree-ring and isotope chronologies across Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, and Chile, providing key insights into long-term natural climate variability and its mechanisms.