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Plant-Climate Interactions Research Group
Our research group is interested in the interactions between plants and climate from the scale of individual stomata on the leaf surface and how they respond to atmospheric carbon dioxide to whole biome level feedbacks between vegetation and climate, particularly forested ecosystems, and how they can ‘force’ climate through the hydrological and carbon cycles.
Research Lead
Jennifer (Jenny) McElwain holds the 1711 Chair of Botany at Trinity College Dublin's School of Natural Sciences. She is currently the Head of Botany within the School and Director of Trinity Botanic Gardens. Over the past 20 years her research and teaching have focused on the development and use of palaeobotanical methods (proxies) that use fossil plants to reconstruct the evolution of Earth's atmospheric composition and climate on multimillion year timescales. Her research team use both fossil plants and modern experimentation to investigate how fluctuations in atmospheric composition and climate have influenced plant evolution and ecology throughout Earth history. Her research programme has been successfully funded through both national and international grants and awards including Science Foundation Ireland, Irish Research Council, European Research Council, US National Science Foundation, National Geographic and Marie Curie.