Carbon cycling researchers prepare the track for sustainability

Working with industry partners, national and international collaborators, the University of Melbourne is at the forefront of the quest for renewable energy sources and has an impressive research capability in carbon capture and energy efficiency. Projects range from revolutionary solar cell development and geothermal energy generation to the production of alternative fuel engines. Research into cleaner energy from existing sources is also a focus with the development of carbon dioxide capture and storage techniques from fossil fuel combustion.

Carbon released into the atmosphere from energy generation or transport adds of course to carbon released through natural carbon cycles. To try and understand these complex cycles, and how they interact with human-induced climate change, a long-term ecosystem research site has been established by the Melbourne School of Land and Environment.

The study site in the Wombat State Forest is the first of its kind in Australia, located between Ballarat and Daylesford in Central Victoria. Researchers from the Department of Forest and Ecosystem Science, Melbourne School of Land and Environment aim to unravel the role of forests in Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, in partnership with Monash University and the Department of Sustainability and Environment of Victoria.

Covering around 19% of Australia’s land mass, forests are an enormous store of carbon where it is taken up via photosynthesis and stored in the biomass of trees and plants as well as in the surrounding soil. But forests are also a source of carbon when it is released during the tree’s normal respiration process and as a result of disturbance events such as bushfires.

This balance is not very well understood in most Australian forest systems but will ultimately determine how much carbon forests can take up and store over longer periods of time.

The Wombat State Forest study uses some unique instrumentation including a main flux tower site and three satellite sites allowing the measurement of carbon, water and energy fluxes of the entire forest system whilst a mobile gas analyser automatically measures the soil–based fluxes of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. On three satellite sites a rainfall reduction treatment has been established to study the effect of rainfall reduction and drought on the carbon and greenhouse gas cycles.

Together the different experimental approaches will allow a better understanding of the processes that control the carbon and greenhouse gas balances in forest systems in Australia, allowing a thorough assessment of how changes in our climate will influence the carbon exchange processes in forests, and if and why forests may be vulnerable with regard to their carbon balance.

In the long run the study will also enable understanding of the impact of forest disturbances such as bushfires on the carbon and greenhouse gas balance. It will also be possible, for the first time, to study the short–term and long–term impacts of prescribed burning on carbon and greenhouse gas balance of a forest.

See: www.forestscience.unimelb.edu.au/wombatflux