Principal Investigator Charles Harvey
Peat-land rain forests in Malaysia and Indonesia store tremendous amounts of carbon in their soils. These forests are now being cut and replaced by palm-oil plantations to provide biofuel. In this project, we will quantify the rates of carbon dioxide and methane uptake and release from these tropical soils under natural conditions, and after the destruction of the forest. We will develop and deploy sensors in the soils to measure the characteristics that control carbon transformations (such as moisture content), and on towers above the forest to measure carbon exchanges with the atmosphere. We will then develop predictive models of the relevant biogeochemical processes so that these models can be employed to reduce carbon release.