Fraser, Wesley T.; Sephton, Mark A.; Watson, Jonathan S.; Self, Stephen; Lomax, Barry H.; James, David I.; Wellman, Charles H.; Callaghan, Terry V. and Beerling, David J.
(2011).
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| URL: | http://www.polarresearch.net/index.php/polar/artic... |
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| DOI (Digital Object Identifier) Link: | http://doi.org/10.3402/polar.v30i0.8312 |
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Abstract
Current attempts to develop a proxy for Earth’s surface ultraviolet-B (UV-B) flux focus on the organic chemistry of pollen and spores because their constituent biopolymer, sporopollenin, contains UV-B absorbing pigments whose relative abundance may respond to the ambient UV-B flux. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopy provides a useful tool for rapidly determining the pigment content of spores. In this paper, we use FTIR to detect a chemical response of spore wall UV-B absorbing pigments that correspond with levels of shade beneath the canopy of a high-latitude Swedish birch forest. A 27% reduction in UV-B flux beneath the canopy leads to a significant (p<0.05) 7.3% reduction in concentration of UV-B absorbing compounds in sporopollenin. The field data from this natural flux gradient in UV-B further support our earlier work on sporopollenin-based proxies derived from sedimentary records and herbaria collections.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | |||||||||||||||
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| Copyright Holders: | 2011 W.T. Fraser et al. | |||||||||||||||
| ISSN: | 1751-8369 | |||||||||||||||
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| Keywords: | FTIR; spores; ferulic acid; p-coumaric acid; shade; sporopollenin | |||||||||||||||
| Academic Unit/Department: | Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) > Environment, Earth and Ecosystem Sciences Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) > Physical Sciences |
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| Interdisciplinary Research Centre: | Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) | |||||||||||||||
| Item ID: | 29293 | |||||||||||||||
| Depositing User: | Jonathan Watson | |||||||||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 25 Aug 2011 14:42 | |||||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 04 Aug 2016 06:21 | |||||||||||||||
| URI: | http://oro.open.ac.uk/id/eprint/29293 | |||||||||||||||
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