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Gaseous hydrocarbons - volatile organic compounds (VOCs) - are key atmospheric components. They may be air pollutants, harmful to human health in their own right, and some are greenhouse gases. Atmospheric chemical processing of VOCs leads to the formation of secondary pollutants such as ozone and secondary organic aerosol - which adversely affect health, damage vegetation (reducing crop yields by 5 - 15% globally) and affect climate. A quantitative understanding the atmospheric VOC budget underpins many aspects of atmospheric science. However, quantifying the VOC budget is a challenging goal, as very many atmospheric VOCs are emitted, each of which produces a cascade of degradation products - numbering over order-of-10^5 individual chemical species from larger VOCs. This is particularly the case for biogenic VOCs (BVOCs) which tend to be larger, more chemically complex molecules, and which dominate non-methane VOC emissions globally. Traditional approaches, in which individual species are measured, quickly run up against this barrier of chemical complexity and cannot assess the total VOC budget - consequently, we are unable to fully quantify the total potential for secondary pollutant formation from VOC oxidation. An alternative approach is to measure an integrated property of all VOCs present - such as their chemical reactivity, the rate at which a given atmospheric oxidant reacts with all VOCs present. This determines the reactive potential of all VOCs - both those identified and those unmeasured - providing a metric directly related to secondary pollutant formation. This approach has been successfully trialled for OH radicals, and measures of the OH reactivity have shown that attempting to measure each individual species by conventional approaches may underestimate the VOC budget by up to 90%. While OH radicals dominate oxidation of many VOCs during the day, for alkene species (such as the majority of biogenic VOCs) reaction with ozone is also important - dominant at night, and as important as OH during the day for the larger BVOCs, mono- and sesquiterpenes, which are the most challenging to measure with conventional approaches. Therefore, measurement of the total ozone reactivity has potential to provide new insight into the total budget of reactive BVOCs present in the atmosphere, and the extent to which it is currently substantially underestimated - a hypothesis attracting growing support from a range of recent measurements. Within this project, we will develop a prototype ozone reactivity instrument, building upon a feasibility study carried out in our laboratory; we will test the system performance with individual VOC standards, and with complex VOC mixtures from plant specimens in laboratory enclosures, and we will demonstrate its applicability to assess the change in BVOC emissions from whole trees in response to environmental stress. This latter objective will be achieved through measurements at the internationally unique whole tree chambers at the Hawkesbury Forest Experiment (HFE) site in Richmond, NSW, where we will measure changes in total ozone reactivity from eucalyptus trees as a function of changing RH, temperature and CO2 abundance (400 ppm [i.e. present day] vs 640 ppm). Within the duration of this project, only limited experiments may be undertaken - but these will provide a unique insight into the response of total BVOC emissions from vegetation to environmental change, underpinning future exploitation of the approach. Completion of the project will achieve technology readiness level (TRL) 4 - basic validation in a controlled environment. Following this proof-of-concept work (i.e. outside this proposal), we have identified an opportunity for initial field deployment of the technique, to perform the first measurements of total BVOC ozone reactivity in ambient air, from a mature Oak woodland under conditions of present day and anticipated future CO2 levels.

Space is fundamental to physical and perceptual reality, but physical and perceptual space are not the same. Perceptual space is created by the brain and plastically formed by the sensorimotor interactions of our body with physical reality. In the digital future, these two spaces are joined by novel spaces experienced in virtual (VR) and extended (XR) reality as these new technologies massively expand in work, pleasure and social interaction. The first aim of PLACES is to understand how sensorimotor interactions in virtual environments shape perceptual space and how this interacts with virtual (VS) and real (RS) space. Secondly, deep and improved knowledge of perceptual mechanisms is essential for the future development of VR as a key digital technology for Europe. To work for the people, VR and XR need to be effective, comfortable, transparent and fair. These aims can only be reached by understanding and accounting for perception in a human-centric manner. Based on these premises, the highly interdisciplinary consortium of PLACES pursues five key objectives: to (1) use cutting-edge VR technology to advance scientific knowledge of the mechanisms of sensorimotor perception and plasticity; (2) use our understanding about spatial perception, gaze control and sensorimotor plasticity to advance VR technology and enhance VR applicability; (3) predict action intentions of users in VR and employ these predictions in advanced user interfaces; (4) understand how long-term usage of VR interacts with perceptual and sensorimotor states in real space and in virtual space; and (5) translate research findings into applied fields in vision aids and social telepresence. Reaching these objectives will put the EU on the map as a leader in perception research and its application in VR. PLACES aims for new frontiers in perception science and its applications and for a significant impact on the people of the EU.

Tropical forests play a critical role in global water, carbon and nutrient cycles, and currently absorb billions of tonnes of carbon, thus reducing rates of climate change. For this reason, computer models that are used to predict future climate change and the impacts of climate on plants and ecosystems, need to be able to represent tropical forest very well. In fact, the response of tropical forests to changes in temperature is one of the greatest uncertainties in climate change prediction. However, currently, scientists do not understand how these forests will respond to increasing temperatures. This is worrying because temperatures are increasing faster today than in the past, forcing forests to respond to unprecedented rates of warming. Critically, the lack of seasonal changes in temperature may mean that trees growing in these regions have a reduced capacity to deal with rapid climate change compared with more temperate and high-latitude species. If this is the case, then global warming may represent a considerable threat to these forests, the amazing amounts of biodiversity that they contain, and their role in reducing current rates of climate change. However, this suggestion is yet to be tested formally. The lack of understanding is even more worrying for tropical forest growing in mountains, as in these areas temperatures are increasing faster than in the lowlands. For example, scientists studying Andean forest in Colombia and Peru have observed that some tree species native to high elevations are dying out while others are moving to higher elevations. These scientists have suggested that these observations may be explained by the fact that trees are already seeing the impacts of climate change and are not able to withstand current temperatures. However, this explanation remains controversial and has not been tested formally. The major goal of this project is to determine if tropical Andean species can tolerate current temperatures and adjust to withstand the higher temperatures expected for the future. To answer this question, we will plant trees from high elevations in the Colombian Andes in their home environment but also at two lower elevations where temperatures are 5oC and 9oC higher, respectively. Our trees will be all planted in common soils and will have access to plenty of water, eliminating potential differences in water and nutrient access. We will monitor photosynthesis, respiration and growth at the three locations in other to understand how they respond to temperature. Compared to other experiments, our study is unique as it will: i) be the first to investigate the ability of large 3 - 4m tall trees planted in a common soil to respond to long-term (3 year) changes in temperature, ii) investigate a much greater number of species than all other field studies on this subject, and iii) measure a more complete set of key physiological and growth responses than in any other experiment. The measurements taken will be used to the derive mathematical equations that can represent the response of these tree montane species to elevated temperatures. Furthermore, to predict the response of tropical forest everywhere in the world to higher temperatures, we need data from high and low elevations in as many locations as possible. Scientists around the world are now starting to collect some of these measurements in forests from Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Panama, Brazil, Peru, Rwanda and Australia. Although, no one of these investigations is as detailed as our study, by teaming up with all these groups we can use their data to test and extrapolate our equations across all tropics globally. We will then introduce these mathematical equations into a computer model to predict future behavior of the tropical forest under warming conditions. The outcome will represent a step change in our ability to accurately predict how this critically important biome will respond to global warming.