Katie Rees

Katie completed an MSci in Chemistry at the University of Bristol in 2021. She started her UKRI-funded PhD at the University of Sheffield in October 2022, titled ‘Quantifying air quality and indirect climate feedbacks of land-based greenhouse gas removal strategies’. She is supervised by Dr Maria Val Martin (University of Sheffield, LC3M), Dr Julia Drewer (UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) and Professor David Beerling (University of Sheffield, LC3M).

Katie’s research is investigating the air quality impacts of combining two land-based carbon dioxide removal strategies: enhanced rock weathering (ERW) and afforestation/reforestation (AR). ERW may influence the biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emission of trees through increased nutrient uptake. BVOCs can have adverse effects on air quality so it is important to understand how their emission may be influenced by ERW. The first phase of her work will involve taking field measurements at a site in Wales where an experimental forest with ERW has been established. The second phase of her project will the use modelling to scale up the field measurements to investigate the potential air quality impacts of large scale ERW+AR co-deployment in the UK. A BVOC emission model embedded within a high-resolution chemistry and aerosol model will be used to model UK air quality under different land use, climate and anthropogenic pollution scenarios.