“Plants play a global role in regulating our climate and atmosphere via their carbon uptake mechanism, photosynthesis.
We all depend on plant species and their ecosystem services (i.e. for food, clean air, drugs, ecotourism) but it is still unclear to what extent these services will change in a future warmer world.
Australia has experienced a sustained period of warmer climate over the past 10 years including several of the hottest summers on record.
Understanding how plant function copes with these warmer conditions as well as the commensurate increase in atmospheric CO₂ is critical to predict how plants and ecosystems will respond to climate change."
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"Specifically, my group investigates the physiological responses, including photosynthesis and respiration to elevated CO₂, warming and extreme heat events as well as the interaction with drought stress to gain insight into how plants will adjust physiologically in the face of climate change.
Our goal is to understand the physiological mechanism underpinning these responses on several scales, and what the implications are on ecosystem communities and services.
Given the large contribution of forests to carbon storage and uptake from the atmosphere, research into the physiological responses to warming and/or elevated CO₂ is critical to model carbon cycle feedbacks in Earth System models.
My research group has been involved in several global compilations that synthesise plant leaf traits and improve land surface models. “
