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EGU Award Ceremony (Credit: EGU/Foto Pfluegl)

Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Awards 2019 Lejish Vettikkat

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Lejish Vettikkat

Lejish Vettikkat
Lejish Vettikkat

AS Atmospheric Sciences

The 2019 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Lejish Vettikkat for the poster/PICO entitled:

Quantification of BVOC emission flux from Swietenia macrophylla King using a Dynamic Branch Cuvette and PTR-MS (Vettikkat, L.; Sinha, V.; Sinha, B.; Datta, S.; Kumar, A.; Hakkim, H.; Yadav, P.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Lejish Vettikkat is a BS-MS dual degree graduate who carried out his year-long MS thesis research work in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Emissions group led by Dr. Vinayak Sinha at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali, India. His research interests lie in mass spectrometry and other analytical techniques for the quantification sources of biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the atmosphere. At the EGU 2019, he presented a poster that contained research results on the discovery of a new terrestrial biogenic source of dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and monoterpenes into the atmosphere from Mahogany trees. Big-leaf Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) is cultivated widely in several American and Asian plantations and present in many natural environments (> 2.4 million km2 collectively). Seasonal variations in the emission of monoterpenes and DMS, as well as carbon assimilation from Mahogany trees, were investigated using a dynamic branch cuvette system, a proton transfer reaction mass spectrometer (PTR-MS) and a cavity ring down spectrometer (CRDS). The work identified Mahogany as one of the missing natural sources of ambient DMS over the Amazon rainforest and provided the first estimates for the global DMS. Monoterpene and isoprene emissions from Mahogany trees. These new emission findings will aid in improving the global biogenic VOC terrestrial budget and assessing the impact of land use land cover changes on atmospheric chemistry and air quality where Mahogany plantations are found in abundance in Asian and the American regions.

Publication resulting from the award

Vettikkat, L., Sinha, V., Datta, S., Kumar, A., Hakkim, H., Yadav, P., and Sinha, B.: Significant emissions of dimethyl sulfide and monoterpenes by big-leaf mahogany trees: discovery of a missing dimethyl sulfide source to the atmospheric environment, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 375–389, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-375-2020, 2020.