Mr Wayne Kirstine

Lecturer, Environmental Science

Located at: Room 2W-256, Gippsland Campus Postal address: School of Applied Sciences and Engineering Monash University Gippsland Campus, Churchill, Victoria, 3842, Australia Phone: +61 3 512 26251 or +61 3 990 26251 Fax: +61 3 512 26738 or +61 3 990 26738 Email: Wayne.Kirstine@sci.monash.edu.au

Wayne Kirstine is a physical scientist with a background in physics and chemistry. As well as a teaching involvement in these disciplines, he is a lecturer in Environmental Science and is the course adviser for the Environmental Management program.

Teaching Commitments

Wayne is the unit advisor for the following units:

• ENV1711 - Environmental science 1: The dynamic environment
• ENV1722 - Environmental science 2: Resource management issues
• ENV3639 - Global resources and energy management
• PHS1722 - Physical science

Research Interests

Wayne's research interests are in the field of atmospheric chemistry, particularly with biogenic emissions of organic compounds to the atmosphere. This research has been conducted in association with Martin Hooper of the School of Applied Sciences and Engineering and with Ian Galbally from the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research.

Most of his recent research has centred around the emission of volatile organic compounds from higher plants (particularly grasses) and their impact on the chemistry of the atmospheric.

Wayne's current research involves developing models for the environmental cycles of methanol and ethanol that can be used to predict the extent of their emission from plants and quantify their global budgets in the atmosphere and oceans. Although not a highly reactive compound, methanol is second only to methane (and comparable to isoprene) in the magnitude of its release from plants and plant litter. Given the increasing use of methanol and ethanol as biofuels, it is important to quantify both its natural production and the processes by which they are removed from the atmosphere.

One of the areas of Wayne's research that has attracted media attention is the recognition that the cutting or mowing of grass is a major source of C-6 alcohols, carbonyls and esters that have the potential of contributing significantly to urban smog.

Selected Publications

• W Kirstine, I E Galbally & M A Hooper, Air Pollution and the Smell of Cut Grass, 16th International Clean Air Conference, Christchurch, New Zealand, August 2002.
  
  
• I E Galbally & W Kirstine, The Production of Methanol by Flowering Plants and the Global Cycle of Methanol, J. Atmos. Chem. 43, 195-229, 2002.
  
  
• I E Galbally & W Kirstine, A Model of the Production of Methanol by Higher Plants for Global Emissions Studies, International Workshop on Emissions of Chemical Species and Aerosols into the Atmosphere [abstracts], Paris, France, 2001.
  
  
• W Kirstine & I E Galbally, The Environmental Cycle of Ethanol, 15th International Clean Air Conference, Sydney, Australia, 2000.
  
  
• I E Galbally & W Kirstine, The Global Cycle of Methanol, Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station Annual Scientific Meeting [abstracts], Aspendale, Australia, 2000.
  
  
• W Kirstine & I E Galbally, Biogenesis of Methanol and its Emission from Flowering Plants, 14th International Clean Air Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 1998.
  
  
• R Smit, W Kirstine & M A Hooper, Methane Emissions from Australian Brown Coal, 14th International Clean Air Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 1998.
  
  
• W Kirstine, I E Galbally, Y Ye & M A Hooper, Emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds (primarily oxygenated species) from Pasture, J. Geophys. Res. 103, 10605-10619, 1998.