Valerie Trouet

Valerie Trouet is a Professor in the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. She received her PhD in Bioscience Engineering at the KULeuven in Belgium in 2004 and has worked at PennState University and at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL before moving to Tucson, AZ. Valerie has been a dendrochronologist for almost two decades and her research focuses on the climate of the past ~2,000 years and how it has influenced human systems and ecosystems. She has used tree rings to study hurricanes, snowpack, wildfire, and the jet stream. She has studied the influence of climate on historical events, such as the Fall of Rome, the Ottoman Crisis, and the Golden Age of Piracy. Her research has brought her to sub-Saharan Africa, Siberia, the Californian Sierra Nevada, and the Balkans, where she was part of a team that found the oldest-known (1,075 years!) living tree in Europe. She has published more than 60 scientific papers, is a University of Arizona Distinguished Scholar, and a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. Her research has been covered by the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, National Geographic, and NPR’s Science Friday, amongst others. Valerie’s first book, Tree Story, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in Spring 2020. The Dutch translation - Wat bomen ons vertellen - was published by Lannoo in May 2020. Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean translations are forthcoming.