Nezha Acil: NXA807@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Dr Thomas Pugh and Prof Jon Sadler
Year of study: Final
PhD: Global forest dynamics - storm related tree mortality and its influence on global forest cycling
Further information: BIOSPHERE-ATMOSPHERE EXCHANGE
Rehab Almutairi: RXA015@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Prof Sami Ullah (GEES)
Year of study: First
PhD info: Forests restoration under global change: response of young plantations to drought, atmospheric nitrogen deposition and elevated CO2.
*Alex Armstrong: ama141@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Prof Sami Ullah (GEES), Dr Liz Hamilton (GEES)
Year of study: First
PhD Draft Title: Effects of atmospheric Nitrogen pollution on Soil Carbon Storage and Greenhouse Gas Emission from Forests Soils
Info: Reactive forms of aerially derived nitrogen deposition sourced from agriculture are often scavenged by tree's and deposited within woodland systems. Understanding how enhanced rates of nitrogen deposition impact woodland soil with regard to soil organic carbon decomposition, microbial activity and the release of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide is required to understand how our woodlands and their soils can be conserved and their provisions preserved.
Sijeh Asuk: SAA815@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Dr Tom Pugh, Dr Nick Kettridge & Prof Jon Sadler
Year of study: Final
PhD: Population ecology and phenological responses of food-producing forest trees to climate change: implications for rural food security
Further information: BIOSPHERE-ATMOSPHERE EXCHANGE
Gemma Baker: gxb760@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Sarah Greene (GEES), James Bendle (GEES), Lydia Greene (Duke Lemur Centre, Duke University)
Year of Study: First
PhD Draft Title: Life on the edge: New tools to track animal-forest trophic interaction across intact to degraded ecosystems
Info: Madagascar is a haven of floral and faunal endemism, with lemurs at the centre of engineering and maintaining the diverse and varied forest habitats the island comprises. There is no such thing as a healthy Malagasy forest without the endemic lemur communities. Forest degradation and loss of lemur communities form a destructive positive feedback loop, causing the loss of large fruiting trees and a shift in forest composition to smaller faster-growing trees less efficient at carbon sequestration. Forest health and function can be monitored through the tracking of changes in the diets of inhabitant lemurs, especially in edge habitats where they are forced to adapt to ongoing changes in resources as a result of degradation. This project aims to use biomarkers, tools used primarily in organic geochemistry for palaeoclimate reconstruction, to investigate the diets of lemurs from faeces, with the aim of developing these techniques to be applied to wild lemurs in the future to monitor forestry changes and forest-lemur interactions.
*Aileen Baird: abb324@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Prof Francis Pope and Prof Robin May
Year of study: Final
Info: The effect of enriched atmospheric carbon dioxide on environmental fungi: Despite playing key roles in decomposition, in mycorrhizal associations providing nutrients to plants, and as plant and human pathogens, environmental fungi are notoriously understudied. Measuring the response of fungi to enriched carbon dioxide is an essential component in understanding how the woodland ecosystem will respond to enriched carbon dioxide. My PhD has two major strands. The first is to characterize the fungal populations at BIFoR FACE, and to measure the variation in these populations temporally. The second aspect is to investigate the effect of enriched carbon dioxide on fungal populations, where I am using environmental sampling from BIFoR FACE in conjunction with laboratory experiments.
Further information: Presentation Poster 2021
*Edward Bannister: EXB717@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Prof Rob MacKenzie
Year of study: Final
PhD: Environmental aerodynamics of the BIFoR FACE site.
Further information: Poster 2019
Kauane Maira Bordin
Info: A visiting PhD student from The Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Kauane studies Community and Functional Ecology, focusing on understanding the drivers of structure and dynamics of subtropical forests. She will stay in Birmingham for 6 months (2021/22) to develop part of her PhD, supervised by Adriane Esquivel Muelbert and Tom Pugh. Kauane will be using data from across the Americas to understand the trade-offs between growth and mortality of tree species and their potential drivers.
Hector Camargo Alvarez: HAC809@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Dr Tom Pugh
Year of study: Third
PhD: Hector is an agronomist engineer from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia focused in modelling the response of crops phenology, physiology and productivity to environmental factors. During his PhD research, he will try to describe and model the deleterious effect of ozone pollution on cereal production and its economic consequences in China.
Further information: BIOSPHERE-ATMOSPHERE EXCHANGE
*Nine Douwes Dekker: NXD934@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Vincent Gauci, Rob MacKenzie, Sami Ullah
Year of study: Third
PhD: “I will look at the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from soil and unravel the role of the soil microbial community. The GHGs considered are primarily methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). We hypothesise that thresholds of soil water, nitrogen and carbon contents will determine the net fluxes of GHGs, and that the spatio-temporal dynamics of hydrological conditions will play a key role in predicting the ultimate global warming potential of forests with climate change.”
Further information: Poster 2021
*Katy Faulkner: Based at University of Warwick
Supervisors: Prof Gary Bending (Warwick) & University of Birmingham supervisor is Dr Sami Ullah
PhD: Looking at the resistance and resilience of forest soil microbial communities and greenhouse gas emission to extreme weather events and a high CO2 world.
Further information: Poster 2021 and CENTA website
Lavinia Georgescu: LTG917@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Dr Tom Pugh
Year of study: Third
PhD: Trees are dying from drought - why care? Forests are huge stores and sinks of carbon. Droughts will become worse under climate change - more frequent, hotter, and drier. The extent to which drought plays a role in tree mortality across ecosystems is unknown. This project will use machine learning to find patterns and relationships regarding droughts and forests at a biogeographical level. This scale is most relevant for understanding feedbacks of tree mortality on future climate change.
Further information: BIOSPHERE-ATMOSPHERE EXCHANGE
William Hagan Brown: w.haganbrown@bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Dr Sophie Fauset (Uni Plymouth), Prof Ralph Fyfe (Uni Plymouth), Prof Emanuel Gloor (Uni Leeds), and Prof Rob MacKenzie (BIFoR).
Climate Change Impacts on Forest Canopy Temperatures: From Mechanisms to Implications. Using thermal imagery to capture leaf temperature, and a range of complementary measurements of leaf traits, William will study leaf energy balance for different species in different forests throughout the world, including looking at the effect of elevated CO2 in BIFoR FACE.
Ben Howard: BCH823@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Prof Stefan Krause, Dr Nick Kettridge, Dr Sami Ullah and Ian Baker (Small Woods Association)
Year of study: Final
PhD: Coppice management to reduce nutrient loads in forest streams
Further information: Poster 2021
*Laura James: LXB973@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Dr Christian Pfrang, Dr R Girling (Reading) and Prof Rob MacKenzie
Year of study: Third
PhD: Trees function as highly sensitive and responsive communication hubs within ecosystems; transmitting, receiving and responding to critical information from the environment, often by means of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). “I will be exploring the potential effects of elevated CO2 and pollutants, such as ground-level ozone (O3), on the chemical communication between trees and other organisms, by examining qualitative and quantitative changes to VOCs released by trees.”
Further information: Poster 2021 Video
Polly Jarman: PXJ837@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Prof Peter Kraftl and Dr Sophie Hadfield-Hill
Year of study: Final
PhD: Young people’s experiences of and learning in urban woodlands.
Further information: Poster
Jordan Johnston: JAJ083@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Seb Watt (GEES), Tom Pugh (GEES), Tom Matthews (GEES), Susanna Ebmeier (Leeds)
PhD draft title: Forest resilience and recovery through the lens of volcanic disturbances.
Year of study: Second
PhD: With many of the world’s forests under the threat of ecological catastrophe in the wake of anthropogenic agents of change, there is a need now more than ever to understand how forest ecosystems react and recover in the wake of a destructive event. The eruption of Chaitén (Chile) in 2008 and subsequent destruction of neighbouring forest is an opportunity to study how forests re-establish in the wake of disturbance. The work of this project aims to (i) establish primary succession dynamics in this particular ecosystem, (ii) determine if this re-growth is stochastic (random) or deterministic (controlled spatially in some way), and (iii) ascertain the implications of these findings on the wider context of forest recovery in the wake of disturbance.
Further information: Poster 2021
*Thomas King: t.king1@lancaster.ac.uk
Supervisors: Based at University of Lancaster with Kirsti Ashworth (Lancaster) Rob MacKenzie is the University of Birmingham supervisor
PhD: Ecophysiology of plant volatiles under elevated carbon dioxide.
Further information: Poster 2020
Jenny Knight: JXK850@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Dr Steve Emery and Dr Simon Dixon
Year of study: Final
PhD: Exploring the desirability of forest landscapes in a natural flood management context.
Further information: Poster 2020
*Angeliki Kourmouli: A.Kourmouli@bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Lesley Batty, Rebecca Bartlett, Zongbo Shi
Year of study: Final (submitted)
PhD: Soil Respiration and Biogeochemistry at BIFoR FACE: This project will measure rates of soil respiration at the BIFoR FACE woodland, and identify the contributions of roots, mycorrhizal fungi and free-living microorganisms; thus, the project will help determine whether trees increase carbon allocation below ground under elevated CO2. Partitioning of “new” and “old” carbon in soil respiration and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to determine how forest soil DOC and carbon storage is changing under elevated CO2.
Further information: Poster 2019
Aleksandra Kulawska: AEK851@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Dr Nick Kettridge, Dr Thomas Pugh, Prof Rob MacKenzie & Dr Sami Ullah
Year of study: Final
PhD: Exploring the desirability of forest landscapes in a natural flood management context. University of Birmingham Further information: Perspectives article - Thirsty and Drunken Trees
Kerryn Little: LittleKE@adf.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Dr Nick Kettridge
Year of study: Final
PhD: Predicting Future Fuel (Vegetation) Water Moisture Content and Associated Wildfire Danger Across Temperate Europe
Further information: Pyrolife website
*Sophie Mills: SAM919@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Prof Francis Pope & Prof Rob MacKenzie
Year of study: Third
PhD: “I will be investigating the effect of elevated CO2 on primary biological aerosol (bioaerosol) production, in particular pollen and fungal spores, in woodlands as part of the BIFoR FACE experiment. Bioaerosols transport genetic material of plants and fungi, can cause and exacerbate severe health issues afflicting humans, and they can act as cloud condensation and ice nuclei, impacting our atmosphere and climate. This research will contribute to informing predictive climate models (e.g. JULES land surface model) used at the Met Office."
Further information: Poster 2021
*Susan Quick: SEQ616@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Prof Stefan Krause & Prof Rob MacKenzie
Year of study: Sixth (part time)
PhD: Tree-Soil-Water relations under elevated CO2 - This project will investigate the role the water cycle (export/import and storage) plays in carbon transport, in a small temperate oak-hazel woodland. Is the canopy and understorey development, natural decay and regeneration in a mature oak/hazel woodland influences by climate variability, especially eCO2, temperature and precipitation? Considerations include: use of water by the dominant/subdominant tree species; understanding of canopy water holding and water flux at the leaf/twig level; the influence of understorey (herb and shrub layers); woodland species diversity.
Further information: Presentation / Poster 2022
*Andrea Rabbi: AXR1049@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Prof Stefan Krause
Year of study: Third
PhD: Mixed forest planting with elevated H20
Further information: Poster 2021
*Manon Rumeau: MLR094@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Sami Ullah & Rob MacKenzie
Year of study: Second
PhD: Exploring the effects of elevated CO2 on free living Nitrogen fixation as well as on other Nitrogen cycle processes in two mature forest, BIFoR FACE (UK) and EucFACE (Australia).Manon is working with the QUINTUS team
Forests under climate change will require more Nitrogen (N) to continue stocking a part of our CO2 emission. The main source of new N in natural ecosystems is Biological N Fixation (BNF). I will be exploring the effects of elevated CO2 on free living N fixation as well as on other N cycle processes in two mature forest, BIFoR FACE (UK) and EucFACE (Australia). By using 15N isotopic methods, we will have a better understand of N cycle response to climate change.
Further information: Poster 2021
*Klaske van Wijngaarden: kxv056@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Tom Pugh (GEES), Josh Larsen (GEES), Ben Smith (Western Sydney University (WSU)) Belinda Medlyn (WSU)
Year of study: Second
PhD: From branch to forest to globe: How do trees choices regarding growth affect forest responses to increased carbon dioxide levels? I will look at the woody carbon dynamics of the trees at the BIFoR FACE and eucFACE experiments. A better understanding of the fate of carbon through increased photosynthetic activity and more insight in the response of complete forest stands to elevated CO2 levels will help increase the accuracy of future carbon budget models. This project will explore the use fieldwork data of different woody compartments to determine turnover rate and chemical composition changes in two different ecosystems exposed to elevated CO2 levels.
Further information: Poster 2021
*Bridget Warren: BAW888@student.bham.ac.uk
Supervisors: Dr James Bendle
Year of study: Final
PhD: Development and application of novel ecological and environmental proxies based leaf wax lipids.
Further information: Poster 2021 and video