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如何影响当地环境。NERC资助的“微气候”就是这样一个研究的例子;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应对当地的微气候。然而，微气候团队的成员建议将他们的研究理解扩展到海外重要的生物燃料作物，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，我们这里的重点不是碳储存（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，即排水土壤，使其更适合油棕榈生长。这种排水显着影响土壤中的水分可用性，进而影响土壤表面可以蒸发多少水，以及热通量。了解这些管理措施的影响是很重要的，因为蒸发通量的变化会影响边界层现象的发展。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。将热带泥炭转化为农业生物燃料的土地正在以显著且不受控制的速度进行，个体种植园的扩大可能会在全国范围内改变边界层动力学控制的反应，因此我们需要收集初步的实地数据，以更好地了解这一点有多重要。这笔启动资金得到了三所马来西亚大学额外投资的支持，这表明他们致力于正式建立新生的关系。

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.