Greenhouse gases

At opposite corners of Alberta, two towers stand above grassy fields, quiet sentinels keeping watch on how the Earth breathes.

The towers and their associated science instrumentation, located near Athabasca in northern Alberta and Lethbridge in the province's southern half, are part of a five-year project that has a team of scientists, including Dr. Robert Grant of the University of Alberta, working to find out just how much carbon dioxide (CO2) is building up in the atmosphere.

Working with scientists from the University of Lethbridge and other universities across Canada, Grant is part of Fluxnet-Canada, a research network that will contribute valuable scientific information to Canada's policy development on managing harmful greenhouse gas emissions and international agreements such as the Kyoto Accord.

"We are basically monitoring the breathing of Canada's forests and grasslands, using Fluxnet to measure the CO2 that goes in and comes out of ecosystems across the country," said Grant, who conducts mathematical modeling to evaluate and analyze the data collected by the Fluxnet towers. "We are testing our understanding of the process that controls the uptake and emission of CO2."