Nature, said Ralph Waldo Emerson, is no spendthrift. Unfortunately, he was wrong.
New research led by University of Utah biologists William Anderegg, Anna Trugman and David Bowling find that some plants and trees are prolific spendthrifts in drought conditions—“spending” precious soil water to cool themselves and, in the process, making droughts more intense. The findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We show that the actual physiology of the plants matters,” Anderegg says. “How trees take up, transport and evaporate water can influence societally important extreme events, like severe droughts, that can affect people and cities.”
Functional traits
Anderegg studies how tree traits affect how well forests can handle hot and dry conditions. Some plants and trees, he’s found, possess an internal plumbing system that slows down the movement of water, helping the plants to minimize water loss when it’s hot and dry. But other plants have a system more suited for transporting large quantities of water vapor into the air—larger openings on leaves, more capacity to move water within the organism. Anderegg’s past work has looked at how those traits determine how well trees and forests can weather droughts. But this study asks a different question: How do those traits affect the drought itself?
Read more at University of Utah
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