OCTF seminar followed by drinks – all welcome

In this talk, Sophie will give an introduction to the biophysics of leaf temperatures, explaining why they are different from air temperatures, and what relevance this has for leaf functioning. She will present research performed in Brazil on current patterns of leaf temperatures measured in the field, and how they respond to warming and elevated CO2 concentration from a greenhouse study. The talk will end with ideas of the future advances in this exciting research topic.

Sophie first stepped into a tropical forest during a placement year spent volunteering on a parrot reintroduction project in Costa Rica as part of her Biology degree at Imperial College London. With her resilience to tropical heat, humidity and creepy crawlies now proven, she completed a PhD at the University of Leeds studying the impacts of drought and fire on tropical forest trees and lianas in Ghana. After six years of post-doctoral research in Leeds, and a visit to UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil, Sophie is now a lecturer in Environmental Science at the University of Plymouth. Her research interests are in the response of tropical forests to global change, including the impacts of climate change, increasing CO2, and forest degradation. She has experience in tropical forest ecology, ecophysiology and ecosystem modelling. Her current broad goal is to use plant functional traits to understand physiological responses of tree and forests to environmental change.