Environmental & Climate Sciences Department Seminar

Climate change is increasing abiotic and biotic disturbance events that lead to plant stress. This affects the composition and spatiotemporal distribution of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) across Earth's surface. Perturbations to the types of compounds emitted could have significant impacts on secondary organic aerosol (SOA) production, but predictive understanding of the chemistry of many of these compounds (including complex mixtures of these compounds) has not been achieved. This presentation will summarize laboratory studies investigating SOA formation from complex mixtures of real plant emissions representing different plant emission types. Unexpected effects on aerosol chemistry, composition, and properties attributed to the presence of plant stress emissions were observed. Acyclic terpenes (i.e. myrcene and farnesene) that are often associated with plant stress, reduce SOA yields and promote fragmentation reactions while increasing the viscosity of the resulting SOA. Aerosol chemistry of these compounds could become increasingly important with elevated frequency and severity of plant stressors such as insect outbreaks, heatwaves, and drought.