Establishing a framework to investigate how palm oil plantations management may influence boundary layer development and stability.

在英国，我们进行了研究，试图了解在我们的景观中创造能源是如何影响当地环境的。NERC资助的“微气候”就是这类研究的一个例子；在这里，我们试图了解风力涡轮机的部署和生物燃料作物如何创造和响应当地的小气候。然而，小气候小组的成员建议将他们的研究扩展到海外重要的生物燃料作物，比如风力涡轮机也可以部署在泥炭土壤上，这是重要的碳储存。然而，我们在这里的重点不是C储存（正如我们的项目合作伙伴正在考虑的那样），而是土地管理实践，即排干土壤，使其更适合油棕的生长。这种排水会显著影响土壤中的水分有效性，进而影响土壤表面蒸发的水量，从而影响热通量。了解这些管理做法的影响很重要，因为蒸发通量的变化会影响一种称为边界层的现象的发展。这是地球表面上方的大气混合区，影响着包括天气和空气污染在内的许多事情。用于农业生物燃料的热带泥炭地的土地转化正在以显著且不受控制的速度进行，单个种植园的规模扩大可能会在国家尺度上改变由边界层动力学控制的响应，因此我们需要收集初步的实地数据，以更好地了解这有多重要。这些资金由三所马来西亚大学的额外投资支持，这表明他们致力于将新生的关系正规化。

In the UK we have research to try and understand how creating energy in our landscape may influence the local environment. The NERC grant 'Microclimates' is an example of such research; here we seek to understand how wind turbine deployment and biofuel crops may create and respond to local microclimates. However, members of the microclimate team propose to extend their research understanding to important biofuel crops overseas, that like wind turbines can also be deployed on peat soils, which are important C stores.However, our focus here is not on the C storage (as our project partners are considering that), but on the land management practise of draining the soils to render them more suitable for oil palm growth. This drainage significantly influences moisture availability in the soil and in turn how much water can be evaporated from the soil surface, and so heat flux. Understanding the impact of these management practises is important as changes in evaporative fluxes influences the development of a phenomena called the boundary layer. This is the zone of atmospheric mixing immediately above the Earth's surface and influences many things including weather and air pollution. Land conversion of tropical peats for agricultural biofuels is proceeding at a significant and uncontrolled rate and the upscaling of individual plantations could change at national scales the responses controlled by boundary layer dynamics, so we need to gather preliminary field data to better understand how significant this is. The pump-priming funding is supported by additional investment from three Malaysian Universities that demonstrates their commitment to formalising a nascent relationship.