Emissions of isoprene, a compound from plant matter that wields great influence in the atmosphere, are up to three times higher in the Amazon rainforest than scientists have thought, according to new findings published this week in Nature Communications.
The findings come from a team of scientists from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine. Corresponding authors are Dasa Gu of both UCI and PNNL along with Alex Guenther of UCI.
Emissions of isoprene, a compound from plant matter that wields great influence in the atmosphere, are up to three times higher in the Amazon rainforest than scientists have thought, according to new findings published this week in Nature Communications.
The findings come from a team of scientists from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine. Corresponding authors are Dasa Gu of both UCI and PNNL along with Alex Guenther of UCI.
The authors also found that as the elevation of the terrain in the Amazon got higher, isoprene emissions got higher too. The phenomenon has several possible explanations, say the authors. It could be due to a variance in tree species, for instance, or it could indicate that trees at higher elevations, with less water, exhibit more stress and release more isoprene.
Read more at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Image: Amazonian tree cover accounts for a large part of the world's atmospheric isoprene.
(Credit: Sarah Batalha, University of California, Irvine)
