Drying effects on root dynamics in tropical forest soils
Abstract
Many tropical forests will become drier with climate change. There is little evidence for how root dynamics will respond to long-term changes in moisture, despite fine root dynamics playing a fundamental role in the cycling of water, nutrients, and carbon in tropical forests. This project assessed responses of fine roots to in situ drying using throughfall reduction structures (-50%) in four tropical forest sites in Panama. Root dynamics were assessed in replicated treatment plots and untreated controls using minirhizotron cameras and ingrowth cores for the 0-10 cm depth. Fine root productivity (mg root/kg soil.day) from ingrowth cores was significantly lower in the throughfall exclusion plots (6.83 ± 1.35) in the wet season (June to September 2018) when compared to the control plots (12.07 ± 1.41). In contrast, minirhizotron images showed greater fine root productivity (mm/tube.day) in throughfall exclusion plots (0.24 ± 0.12) when compared to control plots (0.13 ± 0.03) during the dry season (February to March 2019). This difference might be related to the fact that the core method measures root biomass, whereas the minirhizotrons measure root length. This indicates that measurements of root dynamics must be made using different methodologies to understand how root dynamics will respond to drying in tropical forests.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.B33J2601C
- Keywords:
-
- 0410 Biodiversity;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0476 Plant ecology;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1615 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1616 Climate variability;
- GLOBAL CHANGE