A recent study from Colorado State University shows that plants “hold their breath” in smoky environments.
“You know, we all run inside the house and close the windows and we have somewhere to go. And plants don’t. They have the ability to run. We don’t have any, so we just have to deal with the smoke or find other ways to do it,” said Delphine Farmer, a chemistry professor at Colorado State University. She studies how compounds emitted by plants interact with the atmosphere.
“We were trying to understand how plants release these compounds by taking measurements in the Rocky Mountain pine forests here in Colorado. And when we recently took measurements in Colorado, The problem is that if you take measurements in late summer or early fall, you might see a lot of wildfires,” Farmer said.
Farmer said his students noticed something unusual the day wildfire smoke engulfed the research site.
“The factories just shut down. They stopped doing any photosynthesis, so they stopped taking in carbon dioxide, they stopped putting out oxygen. They just didn’t want to interact with that atmosphere,” Farmer said. said.
Farmer said other plant biologists have anecdotally reported similar reactions to wildfire smoke, but the phenomenon has not been well studied.
“It could be a physiological response of plants to extreme pollution. Another hypothesis is that these smoke volatiles, all the compounds in the smoke, glue the tiny pores on the inside of the leaves. We suspect it may be closed with a drug,” Farmer said.
Farmer and his students were specifically looking at ponderosa pines, a major tree species in the western United States. Farmer said he is interested in how different types of plants, including agricultural crops, respond to wildfire smoke.
“I think it’s definitely going to become more important as the climate changes and we have more wildfires. … There’s still a lot of research that needs to be done,” Farmer said.
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