Accurate predication of both climate and air quality under a changing earth system requires a full understanding of the sources, feedbacks, and ultimate fate of all atmospherically relevant chemical species. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) make up a large portion of the reactive chemical species in the atmosphere and are key components in air quality and climate change1,2. Biogenic VOCs (BVOC) from plant emissions are the main source of VOCs to the atmosphere and despite their importance, the impact of global change on BVOC emissions is poorly understood. For example, while short-term increases in temperature are typically associated with increased BVOC emissions, the impacts of long-term temperature increases are less clear. Thus, our study aims to investigate the effects of long-term, singular and combined environmental perturbations on plant BVOC emissions through the use of whole plant chambers in order to better understand the effects of global change on BVOC-climate-air quality feedbacks.
To fill this knowledge gap and provide a fundamental understanding of how BVOC emissions respond to environmental perturbations, specifically elevated temperature, CO2, and drought, whole citrus trees were placed in home-built chambers monitored for monoterpene and other BVOC emissions utilizing thermal desorption gas chromatography mass spectrometry (TD-GC-MS). Designing and building a robust whole plant chamber to study atmospherically relevant chemical species while accommodating the needs of live plants over timescales of days to weeks is not a trivial task. The environmental conditions within the chamber must be carefully controlled and monitored. The inter-plant and chamber variability must also be characterized. Finally, target BVOCs need to be sampled and detected from the chamber. Thus, the chamber design, characterization considerations, and preliminary BVOC results will be presented along with some ambient BVOC measurements at the ecosystem level from a field study.
(1) von Scneidemesser, E.; Monks, P.S.; Allan, J.D.; et al. Chem. Rev. 2015, 10, 3856-3897.
(2) Peñuelas, J.; Staudt, M. Trends Plant Sci. 2010, 3, 133-144.
