EGU23-14587
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-14587
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Biogenic volatile organic compound emissions from Scots pine seedlings under prolonged heat and drought

Ugo Molteni1,2, Arun Bose1,3, Celia Faiola2,4, Jonan Gisler1, Shan Gu2, Stefan Hunziker1, Markus Kalberer5, Na Luo1,6, Tatiana Nazarova1, Simone Maria Pieber1,4, and Arthur Gessler1
Ugo Molteni et al.
  • 1The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland (ugo.molteni@protonmail.com)
  • 2Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California
  • 3Forestry and Wood Technology Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna, Bangladesh
  • 4Department of Chemistry, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California
  • 5Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
  • 6Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China

Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) comprise the largest, most highly complex, and diverse fraction of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted into the atmosphere (Sindelarova et al., 2014). By emitting BVOCs, plants communicate, fight herbivores and attract pollinators (Niinemets and Monson, 2013). Atmospheric oxidation of BVOCs affects the concentration of methane, carbon monoxide, and tropospheric ozone and leads to the formation of Secondary Organic Aerosol (SOA). Atmospheric aerosol load plays a crucial role in defining the radiative balance and negatively impacts air-quality standards (Seinfeld, John H. and Pandis, Spyros N., 2016). 

Climate models project an increase in the average global temperature for the next decades, with Alpine regions expected to be over-proportionally more affected. Drought, heat, and insects feeding on plants cause stress in the organism, which the organism reacts to by changing the BVOCs emissions: certain compounds can be promoted, and others reduced. This may lead to subsequent changes in atmospheric chemistry and SOA properties depending on the cause of stress and the plant’s reaction (Smith et al., 2021). 

Within the experimental project "Acclimation and environmental memory” in 2022, we studied the impact of prolonged heat and drought on BVOC emission from Scots pine (Pinus Sylvestris) seedlings. Seedlings were grown from seeds collected from selected mother trees from the long-term irrigation experiment Pfynwald, with different long-term water availability. This allowed us also to examine the additional consequence of transgenerational memory on BVOC emissions (Bose et al., 2020). Our results combine data from samples collected on sorbent tubes and analyzed by Thermal Desorption GC-MS with online BVOC measurements using  PTR-ToF-MS and provide a well-resolved picture of terpene compositions as well as diurnal trends in emission levels.

 

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Smith, N. R., Crescenzo, G. V., Huang, Y., Hettiyadura, A. P. S., Siemens, K., Li, Y., Faiola, C. L., Laskin, A., Shiraiwa, M., Bertram, A. K., and Nizkorodov, S. A.: Viscosity and liquid–liquid phase separation in healthy and stressed plant SOA, Environ. Sci. Atmospheres, 1, 140–153, https://doi.org/10.1039/D0EA00020E, 2021.

How to cite: Molteni, U., Bose, A., Faiola, C., Gisler, J., Gu, S., Hunziker, S., Kalberer, M., Luo, N., Nazarova, T., Pieber, S. M., and Gessler, A.: Biogenic volatile organic compound emissions from Scots pine seedlings under prolonged heat and drought, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-14587, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-14587, 2023.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material file