Research

Impacts of atmospheric nitrogen deposition

  • Plant biodiversity responses to pollutant nitrogen deposition (grasslands, heathlands and tundra).

  • Ecosystem nitrogen budgets and fluxes.

  • N deposition impacts on nutrient availability (nitrogen and phosphorus) and soil chemistry (pH, base cations).

  • Impacts on plant nutrient acquisition.

  • Arctic ecosystem function and global change (click for more details):Ecosystem responses to global change: winter warming events, summer warming, snow regime change, summer precipitation, nutrient availability, UV-B radiation.

  • Plant community impacts on ecosystem productivity, carbon and nutrient cycling, climate feedbacks.

  • Vegetation-permafrost-carbon cycling interactions.

  • Environmental controls on plant community structure and distribution.

  • Understanding community and landscape scale functioning from leaf and root function and traits.

  • Simplification of community traits into simple proxies for estimating function (e.g. root and leaf carbon stocks and turnover estimated from LAI).

Phosphorus Limitation And ecosystem responses to Carbon dioxide Enrichment (PLACE) (2017-2020)

  • Grassland mini-FACE (Free Air CO2 Enrichment) experiment.

  • Responses of P limited ecosystems to elevated CO2.

  • Impacts of exacerbated and alleviated P limitation on C-sequestration by P limited grasslands.

  • Contrasting C-cycle responses in grasslands in acidic and calcareous rendzina soils.

  • Allocation of photosynthate-C to P mining by plants with different methods of P acquisition.

  • Feedback to climate of altered C cycling of P-limited ecosystems growing under elevated CO2.

Plant nutrient acquisition in natural and crop systems

  • Grassland plant acquisition of soil phosphorus

  • Niche partitioning of P use among co-occurring species (resource partitioning)

  • Acquisition of natural soil P by crops to reduce reliance on phosphate fertilizers and improve sustainable agriculture.