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Doctor Court Campany

Candidature

Court CampanyGraduated PhD 2016

Thesis Title

Resource allocation in Eucalyptus

Research Project

Working as a plant functional unit, leaves fix the carbon and roots uptake nutrients required for growth and maintenance.  Thus, understanding plant growth across scales requires integration of the uptake of carbon and nitrogen in coalescence, as well as patterns of allocation across plant tissues. Additionally, interactions with a changing climate or negative feedbacks from altered resource availability can impact these patterns beyond currently predicted plant functional balance.  Although leaves drive carbon gain, typical measurements of single leaf physiological parameters may not necessarily represent patterns of whole tree growth without inclusion of belowground feedbacks. This PhD research will investigate how environmental change affects aspects of leaf physiology including, photosynthesis, mesophyll conductance, and tissue chemistry in unison with plant biomass investment to address if impacts on the leaf scale are representative of whole plant responses. Using a combination of whole tree chamber and potted plant experiments, as well as stable isotope techniques, the impacts of global change and limiting belowground resources on Eucalyptus growth will be investigated across scales from leaf to tree.  Findings from these experiments will be used to develop and improve existing plant growth models to more effectively predict the critical drivers of plant growth in changing environments.

Publications

Mahmud K, Medlyn BE, Duursma RA, Campany C, De Kauwe MG, (2018) 'Inferring the effects of sink strength on plant carbon balance processes from experimental measurements', Biogeosciences, vol.15, no.13, pp 4003-4018

Campany CE, Medlyn BE, Duursma RA, (2017) 'Reduced growth due to belowground sink limitation is not fully explained by reduced photosynthesis', Tree Physiology, vol.37, no.8, pp 1042-1054

Talhelm AF, Pregitzer KS, Kubiske ME, Zak DR, Campany CE, Burton AJ, Dickson RE, Hendrey GR, Isebrands JG, Lewin KF, Nagy J, Karnosky DF, (2014) 'Elevated carbon dioxide and ozone alter productivity and ecosystem carbon content in northern temperate forests', Global Change Biology, vol.20, no.8, pp 2492-2504

Research Project Supervisors

Dr Remko Duursma, Professor Mark Tjoelker and Professor Belinda Medlyn

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