Our work considers the global cycling of major biologically and radiatively important elements and chemicals, principally from the perspective of their interactions between Earth’s terrestrial surfaces, the ecosystems they harbour and the atmosphere.

A major focus of our research activity is seeking to understand how forests, wetlands and rivers interact with the atmosphere through the exchange of powerful greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. This includes understanding the transformations involved and the pathways of exchange of these greenhouse gases from microbial to global scales; from the deep past and into the future.

Experimentally, we harness the power of large-scale manipulation experiments such as the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research free air CO₂ enrichment experiment (BIFoR FACE) and allied experiments in Australia and Brazil to understand how future atmospheric carbon dioxide enrichment alters the function of forests with respect to the carbon cycle and major nutrient cycles. How nitrogen is transformed in both natural ecosystems and agroecosystems is a key area of activity with soils the principal locus of transformation of inert nitrogen gas and applied fixed nitrogen, into various reactive nitrogen species that are of relevance to climate change, water quality, crop nutrition and eutrophication of our waterways. How carbon and nitrogen are cycled within river systems is also a key focus particularly with respect to greenhouse gas exchange with the atmosphere and investigating key drivers such as future global change including climate and land-use, furthering understanding of global carbon and nitrogen cycles and connecting terrestrial ecosystems to ocean reservoirs.

Our research is increasingly concerned with the exchange of methane between wetlands, forests and the atmosphere. Atmospheric methane is rapidly increasing in concentration which is challenging the world’s ability to stay within Paris Agreement climate guardrails. There is therefore an urgent need to understand how natural and human-modified ecosystems participate in the methane cycle so that climate action can be given its proper context. We use a combination of field measurements and global modelling (across time) to narrow uncertainties in the size of the most important source and sinks of atmospheric methane.

Research areas

The global carbon cycle and the role of terrestrial ecosystems, under global change
The global methane cycle including quantifying sources and sinks within terrestrial ecosystems and other land uses and understanding their responses to agents of global change over long time scales
The global nitrogen cycle with a particular focus on agricultural use and ecosystem use under future atmospheres (elevated CO₂)