Ylva van Meeningen

Most plants release BVOCs (which stands for Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds) which are thousands of different compounds that give each plant its characteristic smell. To the plant, these BVOCs have different benefits, such as decreasing the leaf temperature, attract predators to insect herbivores and is even used as a way of communication from tree to tree. But once they are released into the air, they react with other compounds in various ways. Some compounds can lead to the production of smog or prolong the lifetime of other greenhouse gases, whilst other compounds in cleaner air produce clouds which blocks out incoming solar radiation which would otherwise heat up the planet's surface. These processes are known to happen simultaneously, but it is unknown how big of an impact each of them has.

In my work, I have looked at genetically identical trees grown at various locations in Europe in order to further our understanding on how the emission patterns might look like for common European tree species and how the patterns are affected by climate.