Cymru Collaborations

Ozone domes at the Air Pollution Facility, Bangor. Image credits: UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology

Last weekend Anna Lee-Jones, NERC DPhil student in the OXLEL group, traveled to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) site in Bangor, Wales to discuss an experimentation collaboration with plant ecophysiologist Dr Felicity Hayes:

My trip to CEH Bangor was a great success last week, and well worth the hours stuck in traffic spent on the M6. I was able to take a tour of the Air Pollution Facility just outside Bangor where CEH run eight glasshouses (or “solardomes”) ranging from pre-industrial to future elevated ozone concentration, and nine free air ozone exposure rings. The main aim of this visit was to meet with Felicity to discuss plans to raise broad leaf UK tree saplings in the solardomes during spring/summer 2022 to investigate the impact of different levels of ozone exposure on sapling health. I will investigate how leaf reflectance spectra can be used to monitor ozone damage in situ before visible injuries develop. We discussed the practicalities of setting up this experiment regime, as well as how my work will fit into the wider picture of ozone research at the facility. Next steps include applying to loan field spectrometry equipment to be used to measure leaf reflectance profiles from the saplings. I’m looking forward to working with Felicity and her colleagues at CEH Bangor on this project, and will be visiting the saplings to take measurements regularly in 2022.