Green leaves and tough grasses – how plants respond to climate change

Your research looks at how plants respond to climate change – why is that important to understand?

We often think of plants as a backdrop to our environment, but they are crucially important to life on the planet. They provide our food and they can stabilise the climate. Plants can’t run or move away from challenging environments like animals can, so if you have climate-related changes in temperature, or droughts or fires, this can have a damaging impact on plants.

How do plants tend to respond to environmental changes and threats?

Plants are complex, they have developed ways to cope with stress like big temperature ranges, or water availability, or attacks from pests. They often do this through complex metabolic responses, where they change their biochemistry and physiology to protect themselves.

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What plants and responses have you been looking at?

A lot of my research looks at how plants respond to changes in the ranges of temperatures in their environment. Those ranges can be quite big – a while back we did some work on plants in the Alps that could experience a difference of as much as 30-40 degrees in temperature between day and night.

More recently, with funding from the EPA, we have been looking at trees, to see when they unfold leaves in spring and lose leaves in autumn. We looked at trees planted on the UCC campus and we have also used satellite remote sensing technology to look at the "greenness" of woodlands in Ireland. We found that with increasing temperatures, the leaves appeared earlier in spring.

Is that a problem?

When the leaves form earlier, the growing season is longer, so yes they could fix more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That seems good, but it could go wrong if there is a frost in spring and the early leaves are damaged, resulting in reduced growth or even tree death. This might not be such an issue in Ireland, but it may be a problem in parts of the world where the cold snaps are more severe.

What are you working on now?

I recently did a sabbatical at the University of California, Davis. I was meant to go over and do experimental work on grasslands, looking at how they sequester carbon from the atmosphere. But everything got delayed with Covid-19 and by the time I got there the grass plants were dead or dormant.

So instead, I have been analysing global datasets of grass species, to try and classify them according to their ability to tolerate stress, perhaps by having a deeper root system or other adaptations.

What is the biggest challenge in your research?

I think, like a lot of my colleagues in academia, it is getting funding. We spend a lot of time applying for it.

And what keeps you going?

Curiosity about nature. You read something that makes you think, or you have some interesting results or you go to a talk, and this keeps you motivated and asking questions. It’s also nice to see the students starting to get back to campus. I recently took up the position of head of the School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, so that is an interesting change too.

Finally, how do you take a break?

I like doing sport and activities outside – running and cycling in particular. You can let your mind drift and enjoy being out in nature.