Growing up in Belgium, tree-ring scientist Valerie Trouet caught her first glimpse of science watching her father, a cancer researcher who stored caged mice in the family’s basement. Although Trouet’s own research ultimately took her in a different direction—on an epic search for the information stored in trees—she was inspired by her father’s passion for “doing something worthwhile in this world.” A trip to Tanzania for her master’s thesis introduced Trouet to the study of tree rings. She marveled at the beauty of her wood samples, and when she traveled to California’s Sierra Nevada mountains to study forest fires, she truly grasped the majesty of the wilderness that she was trying to understand and preserve.
As an associate professor in the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, Trouet has used tree-ring data to reconstruct the jet stream, revealing more frequent weather extremes in recent years than in 1960. Another ...
