Researching and adventuring in the Amazon Rainforest outside of Manaus, Brazil, every day for over seven years, Kolby Jardine was bound to have a wildlife encounter at some point–or maybe a couple hundred. Since his first day in the field, the EESA staff scientist began to cross paths with countless organisms (snakes, giant insects, monkeys and even jaguars, to name a few) that made him appreciate the habitat to the millions of endemic species living in the forest that he also called a home.
In his role as a plant biochemist and physiologist for the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment Tropics (NGEE-Tropics) project, Jardine investigates how plants transform carbon into usable forms to grow and carry out processes like photosynthesis and respiration, placing him at the unique interface of biochemistry, physiology. ecology, and atmospheric science.
An Adventurous Path through Forests, Hiking Trails, and Labs
Jardine has worn many different hats throughout his journey that has landed him at Berkeley Lab, starting as a chemistry and engineering major at Colorado School of Mines, then transferring to NYU to pursue biochemistry when he was fascinated that the same chemical reactions he was learning about in test tubes occur in cells, too. When he began his PhD work at the Arizona State University, he was moved to take another detour: this time his uncle Ray Jardine, author of numerous adventure books such as “Beyond Backpacking” and “The Pacific Crest Trail Hikers Handbook,” was the motivator.
“My uncle thru-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and developed new methods that are now broadly used across the world. His books, integrated with wilderness philosophies and radically different methodologies to the once-accepted norms, started an ultra light-weight backpacking revolution, teaching people how to adventure while increasing connections with nature and making their own gear along the way. After reading his books, taking his wilderness class, and talking with him I thought, ‘I’m going to do that.’”
Jardine’s graduate studies took a pause as he backpacked across the entire state of Arizona, from the Mexico border to the Grand Canyon. When he returned, he felt fulfilled, but not completely; he still felt a call to science and research, no matter how many miles he hiked. He decided to teach chemistry, algebra, and microbiology at San Juan College in New Mexico, where he split his time between teaching and rock climbing in the mountains. He returned to grad school and received his Master’s from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and his PhD from Stony Brook University, where he studied photosynthesis and volatile organic compounds (VOCs)–carbon-containing substances released from plants.
Studying the “Smells of the Forest” and More
Canopy view of Amazon research forest station located in Manus, Brazil. Photo Credit: Kolby Jardine
Part of what Jardine studies is the “smells of the forest,” as he likes to call it. Organisms like trees, plants, and microbes release VOCS to help them elicit internal responses from and communicate with other organisms. For example, flowers release oils that smell good to attract bees and birds that pollinate them. Jardine focuses on VOCs that exist in forests as carbon-containing gases–which, when released, make up the smells of leaves, stems, flowers, roots, soils, etc. He wants to better understand the biological, chemical, and physiological processes that VOCs are involved in, what these organic compounds can tell us about how plants respond to their environments, and how they fit into the terrestrial carbon cycle.
Jardine climbing a tree at a field site near Manaus, Brazil to collect a canopy branch for measuring leaf gas exchange. Photo courtesy of Kolby Jardine.
Jardine’s work also sheds light on how carbon is used during processes like photosynthesis and respiration, and informs how plants use carbon to grow and respond to climate change stressors like high temperatures and drought. He also investigates secondary carbon “pathways” that aren’t critical for plant function under normal conditions, but may help plants survive when stressed from drought, high temperatures, or other stresses like insect attacks. Conifer trees, for example, release stored carbon-containing compounds to defend against pathogens. These compounds can end up in plant tissue, the atmosphere, or even the soil, so studying when and how they are released from plants and trees can help scientists like Jardine more accurately measure and monitor forest carbon dynamics.
“Studying how trees use, transform, transport, and emit VOCs, and how this changes with environmental factors like water availability, temperature, etc., can help us predict how forests will respond to changing climate variables like high temperatures,” Jardine explained.
Some of Jardine’s studies have also revealed major new processes in plants that were previously unknown. His recent focus on plant emissions helped him discover a new “photosynthesis pathway,” which can tell us more about how plants use carbon after photosynthesis for plant growth and other essential functions.
Life and Research in the Middle of the Amazon
Jardine a top of an oil palm plantation near Belem, Brazil where he was studying volatiles released from leaves, fruits, and flowers. Photo Credit: Kolby Jardine
Since 2008, Jardine has been conducting field research in the Amazon rainforest as part of the collaborative NGEE-Tropics project involving over 30 organizations seeking to understand and model how forests will respond to climate change. The research station–a three-hour, bumpy, and isolated ride hours from civilization–is immersed in the dense green forest that provides habitat to millions of species of plants, trees, and animals that do not live anywhere else in the world. It’s also home to the scientists that coexist with these species for days, weeks, and months at a time, eager to uncover the forest’s mysteries.
“It is a privilege to work in such a beautiful environment,” Jardine said, “But it was at times a little unnerving. You’re out in the middle of nowhere–there’s no power, no internet, and no real way to call for help if needed, so you learn to collaborate closely with local researchers, students, and immerse yourself into the beautiful Amazonian culture.”
Jardine in the field with Brazilian students collecting air samples for VOCs emitted by leaves of abundant tropical plants in the Amazon. Photo courtesy of Kolby Jardine.
While the research efforts housed at this particular field site are diverse, a big part of Jardine’s work has been investigating forest carbon pathways on a variety of temporal and spatial scales. For example, collecting air samples from soils, plants, and the atmosphere for molecular analysis can show how carbon is processed on the scale of an individual organism. On the other hand, monitoring VOCs and emissions in the atmosphere above forests can inform which mechanisms and processes these ecosystems utilize, and how they contribute to and affect the carbon cycle on a larger scale. And how could all this change over minutes, hours, or years, in response to changing environmental factors? These are the kinds of questions Jardine and his colleagues ask themselves every day.
Innovation That Shows How Plants Grow
After years of living in and studying the Amazon forest, Jardine noticed something was missing from the commercialized field instruments he was using daily. While there were tools to monitor instantaneous respiration rates (the amount of CO2 emitted over time) from leaves and soils, the same thing did not exist for tree stems, which often make up a majority of biomass in a forest. This means that the mechanisms and rates of forest growth have mostly remained a mystery.
To close this knowledge gap, Jardine developed a method to specifically measure CO2 emission rates from stems in real time, helping to unlock information about how fast, why, and when forest vegetation grows. This information can help provide more detail for forest carbon budgets and modeling, ultimately allowing for more accurate estimations of emitted and stored carbon dioxide from forests.
“We 3D printed chambers that easily secure onto or around a stem,” Jardine explained. “These chambers either encapsulate a smaller stem or attach onto part of a larger stem, like a tree trunk, to measure the CO2 being emitted dynamically. Using this method, we immediately learned that trees aren’t growing much during the day when it is hot. That was really hard to study before.”
“I think there’s a movement towards real-time information,” Jardine continued. “The idea that things are in a steady state and basing things off averages can be inaccurate. With real time sensors, we are seeing things that are changing every second, every minute. And things are always changing–it’s about time we know why and what that means for our predictive understanding of the future.”
Jardine’s journey through forests, laboratories, water systems, and mountains has been defined by an insatiable curiosity about the living environment, and serves as an important reminder that no one–even a scientist–is limited to one passion or pathway.
In a world where every discovery about forests can bring us closer to a future that can protect them, Kolby Jardine’s experiences and inventions represent the profound impact that passion and perseverance can have on the world around us, one tree at a time.
