In this seminar Heather will discuss her adventures in undertaking dendrochronology in Australia with a focus on three area of dendrochronological studies.
The first will discuss the potential uses of Australian trees in the development of long-term tree-ring climate reconstructions. Specifically, she will cover at the use of Araucariaceae species which have led to the construction of the longest high-resolution drought record for Subtropical Australia. She will also discuss combining ring-width and isotopic measurements to expand on the environmental data which can be developed at a single site – specifically in proxy poor regions like Queensland, Australia.
The second area of study will present some recent ecological research focusing on both threatened and critically important Australian species to understand their response to changing climate and fire patterns as well as the importance of preserving these species under changing conditions.
Finally, Heather will discuss work she has undertaken in her previous position at the Chronos 14Carbon-Cycle facility at UNSW where she has been leading research to identify Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) events in the Southern Hemisphere based on sub-annual scale radiocarbon analysis.