Ingo Ensminger

Ingo Ensminger is an expert in the fields of plant physiology and climate change. He has ten years of experience in studying functional phenology and temperature effects on the metabolic regulation and carbon sequestration in conifers. His postdoctoral experience included research at the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Germany, the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology, Germany and the University of Western Ontario, London/ON, where he studied the effect of elevated temperature on the metabolic regulation in conifers. In 2008 he began developing genomic tools for gene assisted selection of trees at the Forest Research Institute in Freiburg, Germany. Research in this project is ongoing and funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG). In January 2010 he was appointed to the University of Toronto. Current projects aim at understanding the effect of future warmer and drier climate on the phenology of conifers. Main focus is on the dynamics of the photoprotective xanthophyll cycle and their relation to changes in the spectral reflectance signal derived from these dynamics from leaf to canopy level. Experimental work in this field is using controlled mesocosm experiments, artificial heating plots in the field and canopy reflectance measurments at eddy flux sites. The Ensminger lab integrates physiological, biochemical and genomic approaches to understand the mechanisms underlying plant-atmosphere interactions.