A new international study led by Western Sydney University researchers has quantified phosphorus constraints to photosynthesis in tropical forests, highlighting how accounting for this constraint can improve the world’s climate. Tropical forests have an important role in the carbon cycle, absorbing more carbon from the… Read More »Tropical rainforests show phosphorus key to understanding world’s ecosystems
University of Birmingham 2022 BIFoR Annual Meeting – transforming our understanding of global forests. Belinda Medlyn, EucFACE, Western Sydney University “Ten years of CO2 fumigation, phosphorus limitation and disturbance dynamics”. See presentation here
Will Goodwin, Bachelor of Natural Science (Environmental Management). Rising high above the tree tops at our Hawkesbury campus, you’ll be able to see Australia’s largest climate change facility. Will shares more about this groundbreaking experiment and how it works! See VIDEO here
New Australian research suggests trees may not be the carbon sponges we think they are. The findings compliment a larger international study that suggests the world’s major forests are saturated and will soon begin emitting, not absorbing carbon. Also, the Finish experiment where citizens are… Read More »ABC podcast: Saturated trees and carbon rationing
Researchers at Western Sydney University’s EucFACE (Eucalyptus Free Air CO2 Enrichment) (opens in new window) experiment have found new evidence of limitations in the capacity of mature forests to translate rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations into additional plant growth and carbon storage. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is sometimes described as “food for… Read More »Don’t look to mature forests to soak up carbon dioxide emissions – Nature April 2020
The following opinion piece, co-authored by Professor Benjamin Smith, Director of Research, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, was first published with full links on The Conversation (opens in new window). The alarming rate of carbon dioxide flowing into our atmosphere is affecting plant life in interesting ways… Read More »Yes, more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere helps plants grow, but it’s no excuse to downplay climate change – The Conversation Feb 2020
“Without EucFACE, prediction models would rely on data gathered from experiments run in the northern hemisphere, which were based on richer soils…” Since its launch in 2012, the iconic EucFACE experiment, based at WSU’s Hawkesbury campus, has exposed a patch of native forest in north-west… Read More »Five Years Of Findings Hint At Australia’s Future Response To Our Changing Atmosphere
Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages279–282 (2017). Abstract: Rising atmospheric CO2 stimulates photosynthesis and productivity of forests, offsetting CO2 emissions1,2. Elevated CO2 experiments in temperate planted forests yielded ∼23% increases in productivity3 over the initial years. Whether similar CO2 stimulation occurs in mature evergreen broadleaved forests on low-phosphorus (P) soils is unknown, largely due… Read More »Elevated CO2 does not increase eucalypt forest productivity on a low-phosphorus soil
Gardening Australia Sat 14 Sep 2013. “I’m at the Hawkesbury Campus of the University of Western Sydney and the reason I’m here is because this is where we have some Australian groundbreaking research,” says Jerry. The first area he visits is essentially a surreal eucalypt… Read More »Our changing world