Organic Carbon Compounds Emitted By Trees Affect Air Quality

ScienceDaily (Aug. 7, 2009) — A previously unrecognized player in the process by which gases produced by trees and other plants become aerosols—microscopically small particles in the atmosphere—has been discovered by a research team led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Their research on the creation and effects of these chemicals, called epoxides, is being featured in the journal Science.

Paul Wennberg, the R. Stanton Avery Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Science and Engineering and director of the Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science at Caltech, and John Seinfeld, the Louis E. Nohl Professor and professor of chemical engineering, have been studying the role of biogenic emissions—organic carbon compounds given off by plants and trees—in the atmospheric chemical reactions that result in the creation of aerosols.

"If you mix emissions from the city with emissions from plants, they interact to alter the chemistry of the atmosphere," Wennberg notes.

While there's been plenty of attention paid to the effect of emissions from cars and manufacturing, less is understood about what happens to biogenic emissions, especially in places where there are relatively few man-made emissions. That situation is the focus of the research that led to this Science paper. "What we're interested in," Wennberg explains, "is what happens to the chemicals produced by trees once they are emitted into the atmosphere."

In these studies, the research team focused on a chemical called isoprene, which is given off by many deciduous trees. "The king emitters are oaks," Wennberg says. "And the isoprene they emit is one of the reasons that the Smoky Mountains appear smoky."

Isoprene is no minor player in atmospheric chemistry, Wennberg notes. "There is much more isoprene emitted to the atmosphere than all of the gases—gasoline, industrial chemicals—emitted by human activities, with the important exceptions of methane and carbon dioxide," he says. "And isoprene only comes from plants. They make hundreds of millions of tons of this chemical . . . for reasons that we still do not fully understand."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090806141518.htm