A new land-atmosphere-and-climate experiment at the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR)

In November 2013, the University of Birmingham launched the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR) to address two major challenges: the impact of climate and environmental change on woodlands, and the resilience of trees to invasive pests and pathogens. BIFoR is a cross-campus institute that aims to engage researchers from Schools as diverse as Biosciences, Physics, Computer Science, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Civil Engineering, Business School, Sports Science, History and the Medical School. BIFoR, therefore, is at the heart of the University of Birmingham's response to the grand challenges facing the terrestrial environment. Understanding the coupling between forested landscapes and the atmosphere will, therefore, be central to the research of the Institute. BIFoR will adopt a systems-science approach from its field-scale experimental work, through its modelling, to its research on issues of governance and societal change.

BIFoR will use the major part of its £15m founding endowment to establish a Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE) experiment in mature, unmanaged, deciduous woodland. BIFoR-FACE will be one of only two ongoing forest-FACE experiments worldwide, distinctive in its setting in an arable-woodland mozaic. BIFoR-FACE will establish 30m-diameter woodland patches fumigated by air with above-ambient CO2 but which are unperturbed in every other respect. The CO2 perturbation is maintained at a constant level (+150 ppmv is the current plan), taking account of diurnal and seasonal cycles, vertical gradients, and wind. The experiment is planned to run for more than 10 years.

Top-level research questions to be addressed by the BIFoR-FACE experiment are:

1. Does elevated CO2 increase the carbon storage in a mature temperate deciduous woodland ecosystem?

2. Do other macro- or micro-nutrients limit the uptake of carbon in this ecosystem now, or are they likely to in the future?

3. What aspects of biodiversity and ecosystem structure-and-function alter under elevated CO2 and how do these alterations feed back onto carbon storage?

4. How can this woodland best be managed for carbon storage under climate change, and what general lessons can be learnt?

Many subsidiary research questions have already been identified, including micro-climate and environmental aerodynamic aspects of the top-level questions above. BIFoR-FACE will be run as an international field facility for environmental research and prospective users of the facility and/or its data are encouraged to contact the Director.