Valerie Trouet is a bioengineer (MSc at UGent, PhD at KULeuven). She is best known for her paleoclimatological research based on tree rings. In 2016 she co-discovered Adonis, the oldest living tree in Europe. In 2020 she received the Jan Wolkers Prize for her book "Tree Story". She is Professor of Dendrochronology at the University of Arizona, and was recently appointed as scientific director of the new Federal Climate Center in Uccle.

In this lecture she discusses how tree rings can be used to study the complex interactions between forests, humans and climate. She talks about cells of wood that are smaller than the diameter of a human hair and about jet streams that are as large as one of Earth’s hemispheres. She tells tree ring stories… and in doing so she emphasizes the important impact that climate and climate change have and have had on ecosystems and societies.