By examining the carbon isotope composition of tree-rings, researchers from Swinburne and the University of California, Davis have compiled the first comprehensive global database for water-use efficiency.
Water-use efficiency is a key measure of how much water trees are sending back to the atmosphere. It increases along with the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide via tree responses to that carbon dioxide.
Water-use efficiency is thus used by modelers to adjust their rainfall and runoff forecasts for the role of the trees, especially in large river basins like the Amazon.
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