Eliane Gomes Alves and her colleagues measured isoprene emissions at the ATTO 80-meter tower across three years to better understand how these emissions vary seasonally and under extreme climatic conditions like El Niño events. They also looked into which biological and environmental factors regulate the emission of isoprene to the atmosphere.
High-quality atmospheric CO2 measurements are sparse across the Amazon rainforest. Yet they are important to better understand the variability of sources and sinks of CO2. And indeed, one of the reasons ATTO was built was to obtain long-term measurements in such a critical region. Santiago Botía and his colleagues now published the first 6 years of continuous, high-precision measurements of atmospheric CO2 at ATTO.
Pfannerstill et al. compared VOC emissions at ATTO between a normal year and one characterized by a strong El Nino with severe droughts in the Amazon. The did not find large differences, except in the time of day that the plants release the VOCs. They published their results in the journal Frontiers in Forest and Global Change.
