The participation of Mike Baillie and of his wife Deb to the Quantavolution Conference 2011 in Athens became a casualty of the acute political crisis playing itself out in Greece. Mike and Deb's AIR FRANCE flights were cancelled due to the Greek air traffic controllers' strikes and a rescheduling at decent hours proved impossible - at least, AIR FRANCE didn't try hard enough.
Mike Baillie is a Professor Emeritus of Palaeoecology at Queen's University of Belfast, in Northern Ireland. He is a leading expert in dendrochronology, or dating by means of tree-rings. In the 1980s, he was instrumental in building a year-by-year chronology of tree-ring growth reaching 7,400 years into the past.
Mike Baillie sent us the three power point presentations which he had intended to deliver and which were presented with gusto and dedication by Scott Mainwaring. |
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In the absence of Mike Baillie, Scott Mainwaring presenting Mike's power point presentations.
Prof (Emeritus) Mike Baillie
BSc, PhD (QUB), MRIA
Emeritus Professor of Palaeoecology
Current Research: Environmental change
My original degree was in Physics before moving to Palaeoecology where I completed a doctorate entitled “A dendrochronological study in Ireland with reference to the dating of medieval and post-medieval timbers”. I was one of the team (with Jon Pilcher, Jennifer Hillam, David Brown and Gordon Pearson) responsible for the construction of Ireland's long oak dendrochronology and the calibration of the radiocarbon timescale.
My interest in high resolution chronology prompted an interest in catastrophic environmental events that showed up in tree-ring chronologies. I was one of the first to recognise the existence of global environmental downturns as shown by synchronous growth reductions in tree-ring chronologies around the world (Baillie 1994). As a result of these observations I have spent many years attempting to reconstruct the effects of volcanic eruptions and extraterrestrial impacts. I am recognised internationally as an expert in tree-ring studies and chronology and was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1990 and the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2006.
Interests:
* Dendrochronology
* High resolution chronology in recent millennia Abrupt environmental downturns in recent millennia
* Environmental effects of explosive volcanism
* Frequency and environmental effects of extraterrestrial impacts in recent millennia
* Mythology as a source of information on extreme events
* Linking tree-ring and ice-core chronologies
Publications:
Selected publications: Books
Baillie, M.G.L. 1982 Tree-Ring Dating and Archaeology, Croom-Helm, London
Baillie, M.G.L. 1995 A Slice through Time: dendrochronology and precision dating, Routledge, London.
Baillie, M.G.L. 1999 Exodus to Arthur: catastrophic encounters with comets, Batsford, London
McCafferty, P. and Baillie, M.G.L. 2005 The Celtic Gods: comets in Irish mythology, Tempus, London
Baillie, M.G.L. 2006 New Light on the Black Death: the cosmic connection, Tempus, London
Selected publications: Dendrochronology
Pilcher, J.R., Baillie, M.G.L., Brown, D.M., MacSweeney, P.B. and McLawrence, A. 1995, Dendrochronology of Sub-Fossil Pine in the North of Ireland, Journal of Ecology 83, 665–71
Bayliss, A; Groves, C; McCormac, G; Baillie, M; Brown, D. and Brennand, M. 1999 Precise dating of the Norfolk Timber Circle, Nature, 402, 479
Briffa, K.R., Jones, P.D., Vogel, R.B., Schweingruber, F.H., Baillie, M.G.L., Shiyatov, S.G. and Vaganov, E.A., 1999 European tree rings and climate in the 16th century. Climatic Change 43, 151-168
Selected publications: Extraterrestrial related
Baillie, M.G.L. 2006 Tree-Rings Indicate Global Environmental Downturns that could have been Caused by Comet Debris. In Bobrowsky, P. and Rickman, H. (Ed.). Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York. 105-122
Baillie, M.G.L. 2007 The case for significant numbers of extraterrestrial impacts through the late Holocene. Journal of Quaternary Science 22(2) 101-109
Selected publications: Radiocarbon
McCormac, F.G., Baillie, M.G.L., Pilcher and Kalin, R.M. 1995 Location-Dependent Differences in the 14-C Content of Wood. Radiocarbon, 37, 2, 395-407
Hogg, A.G., McCormac, F.G., Higham, T.F.G., Reimer, P.G., Baillie, M.G.L. and Palmer, J.G. 2002 High-precision 14C measurements of contemporaneous tree-ring dated wood from the British isles and New Zealand. Radiocarbon, 44, 3, 633-640
Selected publications: Volcanism
Baillie, M.G.L. 2003 Dendrochronology and Volcanoes. Geoscientist 13, 3, 4-10
Selected publications: Environmental
Baillie, M.G.L. 2001 The AD 540 Event, Current Archaeology 15 (6) No. 174, 266-269
Baillie, M.G.L. and Brown, D.M. 2003 Dendrochronology and the reconstruction of fine resolution environmental change in the Holocene. In Mackay, A. et al. (Ed) Global Change in the Holocene. Arnold, London, 75-91
Plunkett, G.M., Whitehouse, N.J., Hall, V.A., Brown, D.M. and Baillie, M.G.L. 2004 A precisely dated lake level rise marked by diatomite formation in north-eastern Ireland. Journal of Quaternary Science, 19, 1, 3-7
Turney, C., Baillie, M.G.L., Clemens, S., Brown, D., Palmer, J., Pilcher, J.R., Reimer, P. and Leuschner, H.H. 2005 Testing solar forcing of pervasive Holocene cycles. Journal of Quaternary Science. 20(6) 511-518
Archaeological
Mallory, J.P., Brown, D.M. and Baillie, M.G.L. 1999 Dating Navan Fort, Antiquity, 73, 427-431
Baillie, M.G.L. 2002 Future of Dendrochronology with Respect to Archaeology. Dendrochronologia 20 (1), 67-83
Baillie, M.G.L. and Brown, D.M. 2002 Oak dendrochronology: some recent archaeological developments from an Irish perspective. Antiquity 76, 497-505
Baillie, M.G.L. 2004 An environmental context for the Dover Boat. In Clark, P. (Ed) The Dover Bronze Age Boat in Context: Society and water transport in prehistoric Europe. Oxbow Books, Oxford. 106-110
Selected publications: ice-core related
Zielinski, G.A., Germani, M.S., Larsen, G., Baillie, M.G.L., Whitlow, S., Twickler, M.S. and Taylor, K. 1995 Evidence of the Eldgjá (Iceland) eruption in the GISP2 Greenland ice core: relationship to eruption processes and climatic conditions in the tenth century. The Holocene 5, 2, 129-140.
Baillie, M.G.L. 1996. Extreme environmental events and the linking of the tree-ring and ice-core records. In J.S. Dean, D.M. Meko and T.W. Swetnam, eds., Tree Rings, Environment and Humanity: Proceedings of the International Conference, Tucson, Arizona, 17-21 May 1994. Tucson, Radiocarbon: 703-711.
Baillie, M.G.L. 2008 Proposed re-dating of the European ice core chronology by seven years prior to the 7th century AD. Geophysical Research Letters. 35, L15813, doi:10.1029/2008GL034755
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|  Contact | m . b a i l l i e @ q u b . a c . u k
Archaeology and Palaeoecology
School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology (GAP)
Queen's University Belfast
Belfast, BT7 1NN
Northern Ireland, UK
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