Oct 22, 2010 08:39 GMT  ·  By

Plants play a far greater role in cleaning up Earth's atmosphere than researchers first calculated, shows a new study by experts at the Boulder, Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The investigators carried out a large scale research on the issue recently, by used computer models, direct observations and gene expression studies to arrive at this conclusion.

The main finding is that deciduous plants tend to absorb about 33 percent more of a common class of air-polluting chemicals than previously calculated, the NCAR group reports.

This study was partially funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and it also included experts from the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) and the University of Arizona (UA).

“Plants clean our air to a greater extent than we had realized. They actively consume certain types of air pollution,” explains Thomas Karl, who is the lead author of the new study, and a chemist at NCAR.

Details of the new investigation appear in the latest issue of the esteemed publication Science Express. The paper showed that the team focused on studying oxygenated volatile organic compounds (oVOC).

These chemicals have been proven in previous studies to have negative, long-term effects on both human health and the environment, and so the group wanted to know how nature dealt with this threat.

“The team has made significant progress in understanding the complex interactions between plants and the atmosphere,” explains NSF Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (DAGS) expert Anne-Marie Schmoltner.

Atmospheric scientists say that oVOC compounds can be transformed in the air in such a manner that they turn into aerosols, the particles that play a huge role in regulating cloud formation, and also in reflecting incoming sunlight back to space.

“Our results show that plants can actually adjust their metabolism and increase their uptake of atmospheric chemicals as a response to various types of stress,” scientist Chhandak Basu explains.

“This complex metabolic process within plants has the side effect of cleansing our atmosphere,” adds Basu, a study coauthor and a professor at the University of Northern Colorado.

The added benefit of all this is that, with smaller amounts of oVOC in the air, less of the chemicals turn into aerosols. “This really transforms our understanding of some fundamental processes taking place in our atmosphere,” Karl concludes.