How do plants adapt to water stress as climate change continues to increase across the globe? This is what a recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated plant strategies for coping with reduced water levels and intake. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand the ability of plants to adapt to environmental stressors, especially in the face of increasing climate change.
For the study, the researchers focused on modeling soil moisture and vegetation water-use based on satellite data. This study builds on past research that involved modeling plant behavior, specifically regarding transpiration, which is the process of the plant losing water as vapor. The researchers aspired to ascertain if a new model known as a nonlinear model could help better understand soil moisture and compare it to satellite data and previous models.
The reason for this nonlinear model was due to scientists hypothesizing that there is a linear relationship between soil moisture and plant transpiration. In the end, the researchers discovered their nonlinear models match the satellite data more accurately than longstanding linear models, specifically regarding transpiration rates and that soil moisture reduces faster than previously hypothesized.
“Even though the nonlinear model is more complicated, it fits the data better, and it captures more of the system’s behaviors,” said Dr. Ryoko Araki, who is a joint PhD student at UC Santa Barbara and San Diego State University and lead author of the study.
This study comes as climate change continues to wreak havoc on global weather patterns, specifically increased temperatures that result in drought. Therefore, studies like this can help researchers better understand steps that can be taken to mitigate soil moisture loss during drought periods, thus increasing the likelihood of vegetation survival.
What new discoveries about soil moisture will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Geophysical Research Letters, EurekAlert!
