CTCD: Prof. Phil Ineson

Prof. Phil Ineson

Research topics and projects: Phil Ineson - CTCD-York

Research topics:

i) relationships between climate and soil carbon stores
ii) potential impacts of future atmospheric CO2 levels on soil processes
iii) the role of soils in producing 'greenhouse gases'

CTCD projects:

1. Assessing and reducing the uncertainty in the UK carbon budget
2. Assessing environmental impacts on soil carbon fluxes
3. Improving existing soil carbon models
4. Assessing the potential usage of earth observation (EO)

One of the greatest problems facing mankind is the impact of environmental change on fundamental aspects of the chemistry, physics and ecology of the Earth at the global scale. Soil is a major component in the global carbon cycle and vulnerable to impacts of human activity; we carry out research into the relationships between climate and soil carbon stores, the role of soils in producing 'greenhouse gases' and the potential impacts of future atmospheric CO2 levels on soil processes. CTCD-York focuses on 4 projects:

The accuracy and uncertainties of the available UK soil carbon database need to be addressed; we aim to expand this work to a European scale e.g. CarboEurope (e.g. Germany, Italy).

We need to better understand environmental impacts on individual components of soil carbon stores and their fluxes. Stable isotopes (e.g. 13C) are an important tool in detecting changes in soil carbon fluxes against a huge background pool of soil carbon (up to 150kg m-2 and more) and are currently being used by his group to study biogeochemical cycles and trophic interactions in soils.

The accuracy of soil carbon models needs to be addressed and improved based on new research. Major problems are (i) the lack of a biological component, i.e. how soil fauna will respond to future climates and how this will affect soil carbon fluxes, and (ii) the need to expand soil carbon models to organic rich soils (e.g. peatlands). Another aim is to overlaying earth observation data (GIS) with certain environmental data in order to improve existing soil carbon maps will be done in close collaboration with Sheffield and Edinburgh University and Forest Research.

Publications
See my York web pages at SEI and at Dept. of Biology for details.

Web links

Contact details

Stockholm Environmental Institute SEI-York
Sally Boldwin Building D
Department of Biology
University of York
York YO 10 5YW, UK.
SEI: +44 1904 32 8551
Fax(SEI): +44 1904 43 2898
E-mail: pi2york at gmail dot com
Personal Web Page: http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/sei/staff/ineson.html

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