Hydraulic redistribution of soil water by roots affects whole-stand evapotranspiration and net ecosystem carbon exchange.
*Hydraulic redistribution (HR) of water via roots from moist to drier portions of the soil occurs in many ecosystems, potentially influencing both water use and carbon assimilation. *By measuring soil water content, sap flow and eddy covariance, we investigated the temporal variability of HR in a loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) plantation during months of normal and below-normal precipitation, and examined its effects on tree transpiration, ecosystem water use and carbon exchange. *The occurrence of HR was explained by courses of reverse flow through roots. As the drought progressed, HR maintained soil moisture above 0.15 cm(3) cm(-3) and increased transpiration by 30-50%. HR accounted for 15-25% of measured total site water depletion seasonally, peaking at 1.05 mm d(-1). The understory species depended on water redistributed by the deep-rooted overstory pine trees for their early summer water supply. Modeling carbon flux showed that in the absence of HR, gross ecosystem productivity and net ecosystem exchange could be reduced by 750 and 400 g C m(-2) yr(-1), respectively. *Hydraulic redistribution mitigated the effects of soil drying on understory and stand evapotranspiration and had important implications for net primary productivity by maintaining this whole ecosystem as a carbon sink.
Domec
Jean-Christophe
JC
Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
King
John S
JS
Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
Noormets
Asko
A
Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
Treasure
Emrys
E
Southern Global Change Program, USDA Forest Service, Raleigh, NC 27606, USA.
Gavazzi
Michael J
MJ
Southern Global Change Program, USDA Forest Service, Raleigh, NC 27606, USA.
Sun
Ge
G
Southern Global Change Program, USDA Forest Service, Raleigh, NC 27606, USA.
McNulty
Steven G
SG
Southern Global Change Program, USDA Forest Service, Raleigh, NC 27606, USA.
D002244:Carbon / Q000378:metabolism*; D017753:Ecosystem; D008954:Models, Biological; D028223:Pinus / Q000502:physiology*; D018515:Plant Leaves / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology; D018517:Plant Roots / Q000502:physiology*; D018526:Plant Transpiration / Q000502:physiology*; D011891:Rain; D012621:Seasons; D012987:Soil; D013997:Time Factors; D014197:Trees / Q000502:physiology; D014867:Water / Q000502:physiology*
D012987:Soil; D014867:Water; D002244:Carbon
Amenu GG, Kumar P. 2007. A model for hydraulic redistribution incorporating coupled soil-root moisture transport. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions 4: 3719-3769.
Battles JJ, Robards T, Das A, Waring K, Gilless JK, Biging G, Schurr F. 2008. Climate change impacts on forest growth and tree mortality: a data-driven modeling study in a mixed-conifer forest of the Sierra Nevada. Climatic Change 87: 193-213.
Bauerle TL, Richards JH, Smart DR, Eissentat DM. 2008. Importance of internal hydraulic redistribution for prolonging the lifespan of roots in dry soil. Plant, Cell & Environment 31: 177-181.
Bayala J, Heng LK, Van Noordwijk M, Ouedraogo SJ. 2008. Hydraulic redistribution study in two native tree species of agroforestry parklands of West African dry savanna. Acta Oecologica 34: 370-378.
Bréda N, Granier A, Barataud F, Moyne C. 1995. Soil water dynamics in an oak stand. I. Soil moisture, water potentials and water uptake by roots. Plant and Soil 172: 17-27.
Brooks JR, Meinzer FC, Coulombe R, Gregg J. 2002. Hydraulic redistribution of soil water during summer drought in two contrasting Pacific Northwest coniferous forests. Tree Physiology 22: 1107-1117.
Brooks JR, Meinzer FC, Warren JM, Domec JC, Coulombe R. 2006. Hydraulic redistribution in a Douglas-fir forest: lessons from system manipulations. Plant, Cell & Environment 29: 138-150.
Burba GG, McDermitt DK, Grelle A, Anderson DJ, Xu L. 2008. Addressing the influence of instrument surface heat exchange on the measurements of CO2 flux from open-path gas analyzers. Global Change Biology 14: 1854-1876.
Burgess SSO, Adams MA, Turner MC, White DA, Ong CK. 2001. Tree roots: conduits for deep recharge of soil water. Oecologia 126: 158-165.
Burgess SSO, Bleby TM. 2006. Redistribution of soil water by lateral roots mediated by stem tissues. Journal of Experimental Botany 57: 3283-3291.
Burgess SSO, Pate JS, Adams MA, Dawson TE. 2000. Seasonal water acquisition and redistribution in the Australian woody phreatophyte, Banksia prinotes. Annals of Botany 85: 215-224.
Caldwell M, Dawson TE, Richards JH. 1998. Hydraulic lift: consequences of water efflux from the roots of plants. Oecologia 113: 151-161.
Campbell GS. 1985. Soil physics with BASIC; transport models for soil-plant systems. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Elsevier.
Chen J-Q, Paw UKT, Ustin SL, Suchanek TH, Bond BJ, Brosofske KD, Falk M. 2004. Net ecosystem exchanges of carbon, water, and energy in young and old-growth Douglas-fir forests. Ecosystems 7: 534-544.
Dawson TE. 1993. Hydraulic lift and water use by plants: implications for water balance, performance, and plant-plant interactions. Oecologia 95: 565-574.
Dawson TE. 1996. Determining water use by trees and forest from isotopic, energy balance and transpiration analyses; the roles of tree size and hydraulic lift. Tree Physiology 16: 263-272.
Dawson TE, Burgess SSO, Tu KP, Oliveira RS, Santiago LS, Fisher JB, Simonin KA, Ambrose AR. 2007. Nighttime transpiration in woody plants from contrasting ecosystems. Tree Physiology 27: 561-575.
Diggs J. 2004. Hydrology and nitrogen loading of forested fields in a coastal plain watershed. MS thesis. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.
Domec J-C, Noormets A, King JS, Sun G, McNulty SG, Gavazzi M, Boggs J, Treasure E. 2009a. Decoupling the influence of leaf and root hydraulic conductances on stomatal conductance and its sensitivity to vapor pressure deficit as soil dries in a drained loblolly pine plantation. Plant, Cell & Environment 32: 980-991.
Domec J-C, Palmroth S, Ward E, Maier CA, Therezien M, Oren R. 2009b. Acclimation of leaf hydraulic conductance and stomatal conductance of Pinus taeda (loblolly pine) to long-term growth in elevated CO2 (free-air CO2 enrichment) and N-fertilization. Plant, Cell & Environment 32: 1500-1512.
Domec J-C, Scholz FG, Bucci SJ, Meinzer FC, Goldstein G, Villalobos-Vega R. 2006. Diurnal and seasonal variation in root xylem embolism in neotropical savanna woody species: impact on stomatal control of plant water status. Plant, Cell & Environment 29: 26-35.
Domec J-C, Warren JM, Meinzer FC, Brooks JR, Coulombe R. 2004. Native root xylem embolism and stomatal closure in stands of Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine: mitigation by hydraulic redistribution. Oecologia 141: 7-16.
Eamus D. 2003. How does ecosystem water balance affect net primary productivity of woody ecosystem. Functional Plant Biology 30: 187-205.
Emerman SH, Dawson TE. 1996. Hydraulic lift and its influence on the water content of the rhizosphere: an example from sugar maple, Acer saccharum. Oecologia 108: 273-278.
Ewers BE, Oren R, Sperry JS. 2000. Influence of nutrient versus water supply on hydraulic architecture and water balance in Pinus taeda. Plant, Cell & Environment 23: 1055-1066.
Filella I, Peñuelas J. 2003. Indications of hydraulic lift by Pinus halepensis and its effects on the water relations of neighbour shrubs. Biology Plantarum 47: 209-214.
Garnier E, Shipley B, Roumet C, Laurent G. 2001. A standardized protocol for the determination of specific leaf area and leaf dry matter content. Functional Ecology 15: 688-695.
Granier A. 1987. Sap flow measurement in Douglas fir stems using a new thermal method. Annales Des Sciences Forestieres 44: 1-14.
Granier A, Biron P, Lemoine D. 2000. Water balance, transpiration and canopy conductance in two beech stands. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 100: 291-308.
Gregory JM, Mitchell JFB, Brady AJ. 1997. Summer drought in northern midlatitudes in a time-dependent CO2 climate experiment. Journal of Climatology 10: 662-686.
Hacke UG, Sperry JS, Ewers BE, Ellsworth DS, Schäfer KVR, Oren R. 2000. Influence of soil porosity on water use in Pinus taeda. Oecologia 124: 495-505.
Heath LS, Smith JE, Birdsey RA. 2003. Carbon trends in U.S. forestlands: a context for the role of soils in forest carbon sequestration. In: Kimble JM, Heath LS, Birdsey RA, Lal R, eds. The potential of U.S. forest soils to sequester carbon and mitigate the greenhouse effect. Boca Raton, FL, USA: CRC Press, 35-45.
Heiskanen J. 1995. Physical properties of two-component growth media based on sphagnum peat and their implications for plant-available water and aeration. Plant and Soil 172: 45-54.
Ishida A, Yamamura Y, Hori Y. 1992. Roles of leaf water potential and soil-to-leaf hydraulic conductance in water use by understory woody plants. Ecological Research 7: 213-223.
Jackson RB, Sperry JS, Dawson TE. 2000. Root water uptake and transport: using physiological processes in global predictions. Trends in Plant Science 5: 482-488.
Jarosz N, Brunet Y, Lamaud E, Irvine M, Bonnefond J-M, Loustau D. 2008. Carbon dioxide and energy flux portioning between the understorey and the overstorey of a maritime pine forest during a year with reduced soil water availability. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 148: 1508-1523.
King JS, Albaugh TJ, Allen HL, Buford M, Strain BR, Dougherty P. 2002. Below-ground carbon input to soil is controlled by nutrient availability and fine root dynamics in loblolly pine. New Phytologist 154: 389-398.
Law BE, Waring RH, Anthoni PM, Aber JD. 2000. Measurements of gross and net ecosystem productivity and water vapour exchange of a Pinus ponderosa ecosystem, and an evaluation of two generalized models. Global Change Biology 6: 155-168.
Lee J-E, Oliveira RS, Dawson TE, Fung I. 2005. Root functioning modifies seasonal climate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 102: 17576-17581.
Lenihan JM, Bachelet D, Drapek RJ, Neilson RP. 2008. The response of vegetation distribution, ecosystem productivity, and fire in California to future climate scenarios simulated by the MC1 dynamic vegetation model. Climatic Change 87: 215-230.
Lin G, Ehleringer JR, Rygiewicz PT, Johnson MG, Tingey DT. 1999. Elevated CO2 and temperature impacts on different components of soil CO2 efflux in Douglas-fir terracosms. Global Change Biology 5: 157-168.
Ludwig F, Dawson TE, Prins HHT, Berendse F, de Kroon H. 2004. Below-ground competition between trees and grasses may overwhelm the facilitative effects of hydraulic lift. Ecology Letter 7: 623-631.
Meinzer FC, Brooks JR, Bucci S, Goldstein G, Scholz F, Warren J. 2004. Converging patterns of uptake and hydraulic redistribution of soil water in contrasting woody vegetation types. Tree Physiology 24: 919-928.
Mendel M, Hergarten S, Neugebauer HJ. 2002. On a better understanding of hydraulic lift: a numerical study. Water Resource Research 38: 1183.
Mielnick PC, Dugas WA. 2000. Soil CO2 flux in a tall grass prairie. Soil Biological and Biochemistry 32: 221-222.
Moore GW, Bond BJ, Jones JA, Phillips N, Meinzer FC. 2004. Structural and compositional controls on transpiration in 40- and 450-year-old riparian forests in western Oregon, USA. Tree Physiology 24: 481-491.
Nadezhdina N, Cermak J, Gasparek J, Nadezhdin V, Prax A. 2006. Vertical and horizontal water redistribution within Norway spruce (Picea abies) roots in the Moravian Upland. Tree Physiology 26: 1277-1288.
Nadezhdina N, Steppe K, De Pauw DJW, Bequet R, Cermak J, Ceulemans R. 2009. Stem-mediated hydraulic redistribution in large roots on opposing sides of a Douglas-fir tree following localized irrigation. New Phytologist 184: 932-943.
Noormets A, Chen J, Crow TR. 2007. Age-dependent changes in ecosystem carbon fluxes in managed forests in northern Wisconsin, USA. Ecosystems 10: 187-203.
Noormets A, Desai AR, Cook BD, Euskirchen ES, Ricciuto DM, Davis KJ, Bolstad PV, Schmid HP, Vogel CV, Carey EV et al. 2008. Moisture sensitivity of ecosystem respiration: Comparison of 14 forest ecosystems in the Upper Great Lakes Region, USA. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 148: 216-230.
Noormets A, Gavazzi M, McNulty S, Sun G, Domec J-C, King J, Chen J. 2010. Response of carbon fluxes to drought in a coastal plain loblolly pine forest. Global Change Biology 16: 272-287.
Novick K, Oren R, Stoy P, Siqueira M, Katul GG. 2009. Nocturnal evapotranspiration in eddy-covariance records from three co-located ecosystems in the Southeastern U.S.: implications for annual fluxes. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 149: 1491-1504.
Oishi AC, Oren R, Stoy PC. 2008. Estimating components of forest evapotranspiration: a footprint approach for scaling sap flux measurements. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 148: 719-732.
Oren R, Ewers BE, Todd P, Phillips N, Katul GG. 1998. Water balance delineates the soil layer in which moisture affects canopy conductance. Ecological Applications 8: 990-1002.
Oren R, Hseih CI, Stoy P, Albertson J, McCarthy HR, Harrell P, Katul GG. 2006. Estimating the uncertainty in annual net ecosystem carbon exchange: spatial variation in turbulent fluxes and sampling errors in eddy-covariance measurements. Global Change Biology 12: 883-896.
Rambal S. 1984. Water balance and pattern of root water uptake by a Quercus coccifera L. evergreen shrub. Oecologia 62: 18-25.
Richards JH, Caldwell MM. 1987. Hydraulic lift: substantial nocturnal water transport between soil layers by Artemisia tridentata roots. Oecologia 73: 486-489.
Schäfer KVR, Oren R, Ellsworth DS, Lai C, Herricks JD, Finzi AC, Richter DD, Katul GG. 2003. Exposure to an enriched CO2 atmosphere alters carbon assimilation and allocation in a pine forest ecosystem. Global Change Biology 9: 378-1400.
Scholz FG, Bucci SJ, Goldstein G, Moreira MZ, Meinzer FC, Domec J-C, Villalobos-Vega R, Franco AC, Miralles-Wilhelm F. 2008. Biophysical and life-history determinants of hydraulic lift in Neotropical savanna trees. Functional Ecology 22: 773-786.
Siqueira M, Katul GG, Porporato A. 2008. Onset of water stress, hysteresis in plant conductance, and hydraulic lift: scaling soil water dynamics from millimeters to meters. Water Resources Research 44: W01432.
Siqueira M, Katul GG, Porporato A. 2009. Soil moisture feedbacks on convection triggers: the role of soil-plant hydrodynamics. Journal of Hydrometeorology 10: 96-112.
Sperry JS, Adler FR, Campbell GS, Comstock JP. 1998. Limitation of plant water use by rhizosphere and xylem conductance: results from a model. Plant, Cell & Environment 21: 347-359.
Sperry JS, Hacke UG, Oren R, Comstock JP. 2002. Water deficits and hydraulic limits to leaf water supply. Plant, Cell & Environment 25: 251-263.
Sperry JS, Saliendra NZ. 1994. Intra- and inter-plant variation in xylem cavitation in Betula occidentalis. Plant, Cell & Environment 17: 1233-1241.
Stoy PC, Katul GG, Siqueira MBS, Juang J-Y, Novick KA, Uebelherr JM, Oren R. 2006. An evaluation of models for partitioning eddy covariance-measured net ecosystem exchange into photosynthesis and respiration. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 141: 2-18.
Stoy PC, Katul GG, Siqueira MBS, Yuang J, Novick K, McCarthy HR, Oishi C, Oren R. 2008. Role of vegetation in determining carbon sequestration along ecological succession in the southeastern United States. Global Change Biology 14: 1409-1427.
Sun G, Noormets A, Gavazzi M, McNulty S, Chen J, Domec J-C, King J, Amatya D, Skaggs RW. 2010. Energy and water balance of two contrasting loblolly pine plantations on the lower coastal plain of North Carolina. Forest Ecology and Management. doi: 10.1016/j.foreco.2009.09.016
Trettin CC, Jurgensen MF, Gale MR, McLaughlin JW. 1995. Soil carbon in northern forested wetlands: impacts of silvicultural practices. In: McFee WW, Kelly JM, eds. Carbon forms and functions in forest soils. Madison, WI, USA: Soil Science Society of America, 437-461.
Unsworth MH, Phillips N, Link T, Bond B, Falk M, Harmon M, Hinckley T, Marks D, Paw U. 2004. Components and controls of water flux in an old-growth Douglas-fir/western hemlock ecosystem. Ecosystems 7: 468-481.
Warren JM, Brooks JR, Meinzer FC, Eberhart JL. 2008. Hydraulic redistribution of water from Pinus ponderosa trees to seedlings via ectomycorrhizal fungi. New Phytologist 180: 90-99.
Warren JM, Meinzer FC, Brooks JR, Domec JC. 2005. Vertical stratification of soil water storage and release dynamics in Pacific Northwest coniferous forests. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 130: 39-58.
Warren JM, Meinzer FC, Brooks JR, Domec J-C, Coulombe R. 2007. Hydraulic redistribution of soil water in two old-growth coniferous forests: quantifying patterns and controls. New Phytologist 173: 753-765.
Webb EK, Pearman GI, Leuning R. 1980. Correction of flux measurements for density effects due to heat and water vapor transfer. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 106: 85-106.
Wilson KB, Hanson PJ, Mulholland PJ, Baldocchi DD, Wullschleger SD. 2001. A comparison of methods for determining forest evapotranspiration and its components: sap-flow soil water budget eddy covariance and catchment water balance. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 106: 153-168.