Water use, productivity and interactions among desert plants
Water plays a central role affecting all aspects of the dynamics in aridland ecosystems. Productivity, stability, and competitive interactions among ecosystem components within aridlands are key processes related directly to water in deserts. The ecological studies in this project revolve around one fundamental premise: that integrated aspects of plant metabolism provide insight into the structure and function of plant communities and ecosystems. While it is difficult to extrapolate from instantaneous physiological observations to higher scales, such as whole plant performance or to interactions between plants as components of ecosystems, several key aspects of plant metabolism are scalable. Analyses of stable isotopic composition in plant tissues at natural abundance levels provide a useful tool that can provide insight into the consequences of physiological processes over temporal and spatial scales. Some plant processes continuously fractionate among light and heavy stable isotopic forms of an element; over time this results in integrated measures of plant metabolism. For example, carbon isotope fractionation during photosynthesis results in leaf carbon isotopic composition that is a measure of the set-point for photosynthetic metabolism and of water-use efficiency. Thus it provides information on the temporal scaling of a key physiological process. In contrast, hydrogen is not fractionated during water uptake through the root. Soil water availability in shallow, deep, and/or groundwater layers vary spatially; therefore hydrogen isotope ratios of xylem sap provide a direct measure of the water source currently used by a plant. The longer-term record of carbon and hydrogen isotope ratios is recorded annually in xylem tissues (tree rings). The research in this project addresses variation in stable isotopic composition of aridland plants and its consequences for plant performance and community-level interactions.
- Research Organization:
- Utah Univ., Salt Lake City, UT (United States). Dept. of Biology
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-89ER60775
- OSTI ID:
- 7014955
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ER/60775-T1; ON: DE93004643
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Water use, productivity and interactions among desert plants
Water use, productivity and interactions among desert plants. Final report
Related Subjects
60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
ARID LANDS
BASELINE ECOLOGY
PLANTS
BIOLOGICAL ADAPTATION
BIOLOGICAL STRESS
CARBON 13
DROUGHTS
HERBS
PROGRESS REPORT
SAP
SHRUBS
TRACER TECHNIQUES
TRANSPIRATION
CARBON ISOTOPES
DOCUMENT TYPES
ECOLOGY
EVEN-ODD NUCLEI
ISOTOPE APPLICATIONS
ISOTOPES
LIGHT NUCLEI
MATERIALS
NUCLEI
SINTERED MATERIALS
STABLE ISOTOPES
540210* - Environment
Terrestrial- Basic Studies- (1990-)
553006 - Agriculture & Food Technology- Other Agricultural Applications- (1987-)
551001 - Physiological Systems- Tracer Techniques