Title: Precipitation mediates sap flux sensitivity to evaporative demand in the neotropics

Journal Article · · Oecologia
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  1. Swiss Federal Inst. for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Birmensdorf (Switzerland); Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  2. Univ. of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX (United States)
  3. USDA Forest Service, Rio Piedras, PR (United States)
  4. Smithsonian Tropical Research Inst., Panama City (Panama); Smithsonian Conservation Biology Inst., Front Royal, VA (United States)
  5. Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham, NH (United States)
  6. Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States); Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
  7. Chapman Univ., Orange, CA (United States)
  8. Florida International Univ., Miami, FL (United States)
  9. Univ. of Lorraine, Nancy (France)
  10. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  11. Univ. de Guyane, Kourou (France)
  12. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  13. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  14. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States); Smithsonian Tropical Research Inst., Panama City (Panama)
  15. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  16. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States); Univ. of Montpellier (France)
  17. Inst. Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA), Manaus (Brazil)
  18. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
  19. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
  20. Swiss Federal Inst. for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Birmensdorf (Switzerland); ETH Zurich (Switzerland); Czech Univ. of Life Sciences Prague, Suchdol (Czech Republic)
  21. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  22. Smithsonian Tropical Research Inst., Panama City (Panama); Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, LA (United States)
  23. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Transpiration in humid tropical forests modulates the global water cycle and is a key driver of climate regulation. Yet, our understanding of how tropical trees regulate sap flux in response to climate variability remains elusive. With a progressively warming climate, atmospheric evaporative demand [i.e., vapor pressure deficit (VPD)] will be increasingly important for plant functioning, becoming the major control of plant water use in the twenty-first century. Using measurements in 34 tree species at seven sites across a precipitation gradient in the neotropics, we determined how the maximum sap flux velocity (vmax) and the VPD threshold at which vmax is reached (VPDmax) vary with precipitation regime [mean annual precipitation (MAP); seasonal drought intensity (PDRY)] and two functional traits related to foliar and wood economics spectra [leaf mass per area (LMA); wood specific gravity (WSG)]. We show that, even though vmax is highly variable within sites, it follows a negative trend in response to increasing MAP and PDRY across sites. LMA and WSG exerted little effect on vmax and VPDmax, suggesting that these widely used functional traits provide limited explanatory power of dynamic plant responses to environmental variation within hyper-diverse forests. This study demonstrates that long-term precipitation plays an important role in the sap flux response of humid tropical forests to VPD. Finally, our findings suggest that under higher evaporative demand, trees growing in wetter environments in humid tropical regions may be subjected to reduced water exchange with the atmosphere relative to trees growing in drier climates.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
Agence Nationale de la Recherché (ANR); Allenvi; AnaEE France; Ecofor; Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF); Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF); USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; AC05-00OR22725; SC0011806
OSTI ID:
1581383
Journal Information:
Oecologia, Journal Name: Oecologia Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 191; ISSN 0029-8549
Publisher:
SpringerCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
evapotranspiration
plant functional traits
transpiration
vapor pressure deficit