Nature Communications
Nature Communications
5 years ago

Airborne observations reveal elevational gradient in tropical forest isoprene emissions

Airborne observations reveal elevational gradient in tropical forest isoprene emissions
Paulo Artaxo, Qing Yang, Maoyi Huang, Manish Shrivastava, John E. Shilling, Guoyong Leng, Chun Zhao, Trissevgeni Stavrakou, Oscar Vega, Haofei Yu, Ying Liu, Scot T. Martin, Roger Seco, Alex B. Guenther, Saewung Kim, Julio Tóta, Karla M. Longo, Rodrigo Augusto Ferreira de Souza, Zhiyuan Hu, Eliane G. Alves, Dasa Gu, Fernando C. Santos
Isoprene dominates global non-methane volatile organic compound emissions, and impacts tropospheric chemistry by influencing oxidants and aerosols. Isoprene emission rates vary over several orders of magnitude for different plants, and characterizing this immense biological chemodiversity is a challenge for estimating isoprene emission from tropical forests. Here we present the isoprene emission estimates from aircraft eddy covariance measurements over the Amazonian forest. We report isoprene emission rates that are three times higher than satellite top-down estimates and 35% higher than model predictions. The results reveal strong correlations between observed isoprene emission rates and terrain elevations, which are confirmed by similar correlations between satellite-derived isoprene emissions and terrain elevations. We propose that the elevational gradient in the Amazonian forest isoprene emission capacity is determined by plant species distributions and can substantially explain isoprene emission variability in tropical forests, and use a model to demonstrate the resulting impacts on regional air quality.

Publisher URL: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15541

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15541

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