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Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2012
- Title: Atmospheric H2 fluxes at Harvard Forest
- Primary Author: Laura Meredith (University of Arizona)
- Additional Authors: J. William Munger (Harvard University); Ronald Prinn (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Steven Wofsy (Harvard University)
- Abstract:
Microorganisms have produced dramatic shifts in the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere. They continue to be important drivers of ocean- and land-atmosphere exchanges of gases that have a strong influence on atmospheric composition and climate. An interesting example is the microbial influence on atmospheric molecular hydrogen (H2), which dominates the fate of this gas in the atmosphere. H2 is emitted to the atmosphere by about half natural and half anthropogenic, or human-induced, processes and it is predominantly removed from the atmosphere by microorganisms in the soil, which makes this process the most important, yet least understood, player in the atmospheric H2 budget. There is a concern that should hydrogen be used as a secondary fuel, increased leakage emissions could increase its atmospheric concentration. How much H2 remains in the atmosphere is likely controlled by the soil sink, which is important because H2 decreases the ability of the atmosphere to ‘cleanse’ itself of greenhouse gases, such as methane, and thus affects the climate. In this work, I have deployed a custom-built instrument to the Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research site in central Massachusetts to measure the fluxes of hydrogen between the atmosphere and the forest ecosystem, with a targeted eye on its strong soil sink. The instrument measures hydrogen gradients that can, along with a suite of other measurements, be used to calculate hydrogen fluxes. These data will be used to determine the strength and seasonality of the soil sink at Harvard Forest.
Recent video on the experimental setup: http://eaps-www.mit.edu/paoc/about/spotlights/back-forest - Research Category: Forest-Atmosphere Exchange
