Prof Patrick Baker

Patrick Baker is a Professor of Silviculture and Forest Ecology at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on understanding how forests change and the factors that drive these changes. Over the past decade his research group has produced the first multi-century drought reconstruction for eastern Australia, mapped the distribution of hollow-bearing trees across the Central Highlands of Victoria, developed new quantitative tools for estimating the carrying capacity of forests, and demonstrated how fire regimes in southeastern Australia have changed over the past 2500 years. Prof Baker also has been working in continental Southeast Asia’s seasonal tropical forests for the past 25 years as part of the Smithsonian Institution’s ForestGEO network. He is a former ARC Future Fellow and currently a Charles Bullard Fellow at Harvard University.