Adam Kiani BIFoR-FACE

Using a Small Grant from ECT, the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research has employed Adam Kiani to establish a long-term archive for leaf-litter from the BIFoR-FACE CO₂ elevation experiment at Norbury in Staffordshire. Adam shares his experience below, explaining why such work is vitally important.

Every Day I’m Rustling…

A bag filled with the memory
of the colour green
It can be smelled but not seen.
The painful crackle as I strangle
the shape out of life-giving organs.
Empty their remains onto cheap metal
Force them into transparent solitude.

One day, they will be free to rot.
Today, they must be maintained.

I was hired by the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR) and co-funded by the ECT, to produce a long-term leaf-litter archive that is both time and space efficient. I was presented with 250 cardboard boxes, filled with over 6,000 brown paper bags (left), further-filled with thousands and thousands of dry, brown leaves. To me, they have always been brown. Brown in brown in brown. A Russian doll of reconstituted tree.

In actual fact, the leaves originally formed a fraction of the forest canopy in BIFoR's Staffordshire Free Air CO₂ Enrichment (FACE) experiment (pictured left). Some of the leaves have fallen from trees that have grown while surrounded by air enriched with CO₂ - with the CO₂ concentration mirroring that projected for air in 2050 (an increase of approximately 150 parts per million!). They represent the leaves of the future. Others (that have lived within control plots) have led close to normal lives in ambient CO₂ concentrations, which allows a comparison to be made. It allows BIFoR to research and begin to understand the myriad impacts that projected elevation of ambient CO₂ concentrations may have on forests.

Here lies the importance of this archiving task. The leaves are being maintained for decades longer than they would usually stick around for, and they act as a time capsule to show what the leaves were like (e.g. ratios of different isotopes) on the specific date of collection. This provides scientists with the information they need to understand how leaves behave differently in elevated CO₂ conditions, thus how they might behave differently in 2050. Increasing the accuracy of these predictions of future leaf chemical composition can help to improve strategies for maximising the health and productivity of the next generation of forests.

So, despite their dull brown appearance, the leaves I have been working with have actually led very interesting and important lives; some of them, for all they know, have been transported 30 years into the future! But, after spending so much time with the leaves, and only the leaves, for company, I began to empathise with the poor shrivelled things. I wrote the poem at the top of this blog both as a reflection of my experience while crushing the leaves, and of the empathy that I developed for them while completing the project. I hope you enjoyed it!

Additional Information

Further detail on the history and progress of the awe-inspiring BIFoR-FACE long-term CO₂ elevation experiment is available on our dedicated webpage.