Research project
ASICA
- Start date: 1 September 2015
- End date: 31 August 2020
- Funder: EU Horizon 2020
- Co-investigators: Professor Emanuel Gloor
ASICA is a project that aims to measure stable isotopes of CO₂ in air from the Amazon. The project started in 2015 and will run for five years. Over that period we will collect thousands of air samples using light aircraft over the Amazon. In various laboratories in Brazil and the Netherlands we will measure levels of CO₂, and of its of δ¹³C and Δ17O isotope ratios.
The main purpose of these measurements is to answer two burning scientific questions about the Amazon rain forest: (1) How large is the total uptake of CO₂ by photosynthesis in the forest each year? (2) How does photosynthesis change when the forest is experiencing a drought?