FORMAS: Towards full understanding of managed boreal forests as part of climate system: Role of biogenic volatile organic compounds

In the proposed project, we aim to better quantify one of the agents likely to cause negative climate forcing (cooling) - the emission of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC) from managed boreal forest in Sweden. Forests have a central part in the Swedish climate strategy, as they take up large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and thus counteract the expected anthropogenic climate warming effect. In addition to that, BVOCs emitted by forests have a cooling effect via their impact on the growth of secondary
organic aerosol (SOA). Thus, these emissions are hypothesized to be a part of the continental biosphereaerosol-cloud-climate (COBACC) feedback. However, our quantitative understanding of the BVOC emission from boreal forests is extremely limited as most of the data comes from a couple of sites only, with very limited
geographical coverage. We will conduct measurements of ecosystem scale BVOC emissions from boreal forest growing in Swedish conditions. This unique data will be used to improve the national BVOC inventory. Also, as the forest at the measurement site is going to be clear-cut after this project, the data collected will be indispensable baseline data for planned forest management related projects.