Gassy Plants and Climate Flashbacks

As humans, we retain both joyful and painful memories. Similarly, our immune system responds to disease-causing agents by recalling past immunizations, like those for the flu and COVID. Just as our brain and immune system retain memories of stress, plant can do the same. We have found that plants exposed to floods develop a long-term memory of such events. This talk will guide you through a journey—from how plants sense they are suffocating during floods to how they can use these difficult experiences to build greater resilience against future flooding.

Most climatic and environmental catastrophes from Earth’s past coincided in time with episodes of exceptional magmatic activity. The synchrony between these phenomena points to a causality, which is researched in the rapid release of mainly volcanic gases. The extraordinary activity of Large Igneous Provinces represents indeed the closest, natural analogue of current anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. But how can we investigate gaseous species emitted into the atmosphere million years ago? This talk will focus on some examples, spanning different geographical areas and geological epochs.

Plants release a large number of gases which can undergo chemical reactions in the atmosphere; influencing pollution levels or cloud formation. However, vegetation release so many gases that we struggle to quantify, and thus model, them all! Our research has looked as using two measurement techniques together to understand both which gases are there, and also the likely impact those gases have on atmospheric chemistry.