GEOG Seminar 2/9: Xueyuan Gao, Lighting up Tropical Forests at Night

Join us for our weekly seminar series! This semester, we're kicking off with a presentation by our very own Xueyuan (Eric) Gao, who will be presenting "Exploration of a novel carbon dioxide removal option: lighting up tropical forests at night."

Abstract: Plants primarily conduct photosynthesis in the daytime, offering an opportunity to increase photosynthesis and carbon sink by providing light at night. We used the fully coupled Community Earth System Model to explore the feasibility of a novel carbon dioxide removal proposal: lighting up tropical forests at night via lamp networks above the forest canopy. Simulation results show that additional light increased tropical forest carbon sink by 10.4+-0.05 petagrams of carbon per year, resulting in a decrease in atmospheric CO₂ and suppression of global warming. In addition, local temperature and precipitation increased. When the lighting experiment was terminated, however, tropical forest photosynthesis decreased quickly while soil respiration remained high, making forests a net carbon source. This study suggests that enhancing terrestrial ecosystem carbon sequestration by altering environmental factors might be an inefficient approach for climate change mitigation and could induce post-action CO₂ outgassing.

Location: This seminar will be taking place in LeFrak 1158 and on Zoom. For Zoom details, please email xygao@terpmail.umd.edu.