You are here
Harvard Forest REU Symposium Abstract 2018
- Title: Physiological strategies for conserving water and using sunlight in four New England trees
- Author: Ruth A van Kampen (Bates College)
- Abstract:
Drought events are becoming more common with a warming climate; additionally, insects are migrating northwards and threatening the health of many New England forest ecosystems. It is important to study these effects in tandem to understand how forest tree species may respond and change their survival strategies in order to survive these global disturbances. Minimum stomatal conductance (gmin), stomatal response (SR), and water use efficiency (WUE) were measured and calculated for Acer rubrum, Quercus rubra, Fraxinus americana, and Fagus grandifolia saplings at the Harvard Forest Common Garden in Petersham, MA. Initial data suggests that A. rubrum had low gmin values, a fast SR, and high WUE, making it the best strategist among the four species studied. The worst strategist was F. grandifolia, as it had poor SR and WUE. Q. rubra and F. americana were both moderately successful strategists. Overall, more work will have to be done to characterize the strategies of these species especially as they pertain to their level of shade tolerance. Future work will include comparing the characteristics of first flush and second flush leaves of defoliated trees to determine what strategies these trees are employing to deal with defoliation and water stress. I hypothesize that defoliated and droughted trees will make the most extreme adjustments in the morphology and physiology of second flush leaves in order to account for the extreme loss of photosynthetic machinery.
- Research Category: Physiological Ecology, Population Dynamics, and Species Interactions
