Presenters & Advisers
Ruth Varner 
Research Assistant Professor
Faculty Adviser
In the dark of night during a steamy stretch of North Carolinian midsummer weather, a team of two students climbs a 15-meter tower to the high branches of pine and sweet gum trees. For the next 45 minutes, they'll take air samples and readings from instruments measuring gas emissions from the trees' branches. It's a process they’ll repeat every two hours, around the clock, for 10 straight days.
The students, a UNH undergraduate and Ph.D. candidate, are at the Duke Forest FACE (Free Air CO2 Enrichment) site working with UNH research assistant professor Ruth Varner. They are studying how plants respond to an increased CO2 environment and how this may impact future air quality. The work is as important as the schedule is grueling.
"We know CO2 is increasing and will continue to increase," says Varner. "What we're not sure about is how the natural ecosystems will respond," she adds.
Varner is part of UNH's Climate Change Research Center. Closer to home, she and her students study gas emissions at diverse local field sites and in her Morse Hall lab, where she is working with UNH sophomore Jordan Goodrich to examine emissions of methyl halides from fungi as part of a National Science Foundation-funded study. "Methyl halides are important in the atmosphere because halogen atoms can destroy ozone," the barrier protecting Earth from solar radiation, Varner says. "Jordan has been growing the fungi and running air samples on a gas chromatographer," work he will continue during the upcoming summer break.
"What I like about working with undergraduates is they bring a fresh perspective to the research," says Varner.
