BioVOLHum · An understated player of Climate Change - increased air humidity - impact on volatile signaling compound emission at northern forests

An understated player of Climate Change - increased air humidity - impact on volatile signaling compound emission at northern forests

Global climate scenarios predict that differently from southern regions, where more drought occasions will occur in future, in northern regions climate will be wetter with higher rates of precipitation. We cannot predict very accurately, how wet and cloudy the future climate will be in north, if we have no idea of the effect of forest canopies on future climate. The formation of clouds is not merely important because of increased precipitation probability but also because the more there will be cloudy days, the less sunlight reaches the vegetation. Forests emit highly reactive particles (volatile organic compounds – VOC and nitric oxides - NOx) which play an important role in cloud formation above forests. Just as atmospheric properties (temperature and humidity) affect the emissions of those reactive particles, reactive particles in turn affect atmospheric properties as well. In order to make any assumptions of how cloudy and humid future climate in north will be, we need to understand, how climate affects the emissions of different reactive particles from northern forests. Also, for general society it is important to know about the reactive compound emission potential of different forest species, while in order to mitigate the effect of human-induced warming, the emission potential of different tree species might be an important factor to consider, if one decides, which species of trees will be planted in forestry section. In current project, our aim was to understand, how increased air humidity and soil moisture affects the emissions of reactive compounds from canopies of silver birches (which is a very common tree species in northern Europe). We studied the changes in reactive compound emissions, that are directly related with higher moisture conditions. We also investigated, how wet climate indirectly affects the physiology of birches and thus also affects the production of volatile reactive compounds. Special interest of this project was to reveal, if the inability of plants to use produced sugars for growth due to non-optimal climate conditions, might increase the emissions of carbon containing reactive particles as carbon is in excess.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз