Rate My Professor Soumaya Belmecheri

Soumaya Belmecheri is an Associate Professor at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research (LTRR) at The University of Arizona, holding the title of Associate Professor of Dendrochronology and serving as a member of the Graduate Faculty. She conducted her PhD studies at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, from October 2005 to December 2008. Following her doctoral work, Belmecheri served as a Post-doctoral Research Associate in Paleoclimate at The University of Arizona. She held a position at Pennsylvania State University from 2012 to 2014 before returning to The University of Arizona, where she has been Associate Professor since 2016. She is affiliated with the TIME Lab at LTRR and serves as an advisor for the IsoTropics project. In 2025, her team was selected as an awardee of The University of Arizona Big Idea Challenge.

Belmecheri's research focuses on stable isotope geochemistry in tree-rings to reconstruct paleoclimate variability, carbon cycle processes, and ecophysiological responses. Her publications include the highly cited "Multi-century evaluation of Sierra Nevada snowpack" (Nature Climate Change, 2016), revealing the lowest snowpack in 500 years; "Disentangling the role of photosynthesis and stomatal conductance on rising forest water-use efficiency" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019); "Integrating the evidence for a terrestrial carbon sink caused by increasing atmospheric CO2" (New Phytologist, 2021); "Cross-biome synthesis of source versus sink limits to tree growth" (Science, 2022); "Recent increases in drought frequency cause observed multi-year drought legacies in the tree rings of semi-arid forests" (Oecologia, 2020); and "Latitudinal gradients in tree ring stable carbon and oxygen isotopes reveal differential climate influences of the North American Monsoon System" (Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 2016). With over 3,159 citations on Google Scholar, her work advances understanding of climate impacts on forests and water resources. She received the inaugural Tree-Ring Society Florence Hawley Ellis Diversity Award and has delivered colloquia at the School of Geography, Development & Environment.