Forests support much of the world's biodiversity and play a vital role in regulating Earth's climate, but they are increasingly exposed to drought.
Forests support much of the world's biodiversity and play a vital role in regulating Earth's climate, but they are increasingly exposed to drought. To understand the potential consequences of drought, a key question is whether trees can acclimate to prolonged water stress by altering their physiology.
Many previous attempts to answer this question have relied on evidence from potted plants or natural rainfall gradients, leaving uncertainty over whether trees growing in natural forest environments respond in the same way. Now, a new global forest study that better reflects natural conditions has found that trees do not substantially alter their physiological traits to cope with prolonged drought.
The study, led by researchers from the South China Botanical Garden (SCBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), is based on 40 throughfall reduction experiments conducted across forests worldwide and represents one of the most comprehensive field-based assessments of drought acclimation to date.
Read More at: Chinese Aadcemy of Science
A rainfall reduction plot used to simulate drought in a temperate forest in Baotianman, Henan, China. (Photo Credit: CHEN Zhicheng)
