Leaf structure and water relations were studied in a temperate population of Avicennia marina subsp. australasica along a natural salinity gradient [28 to 49 parts per thousand (ppt)] and compared with two subspecies grown naturally in similar soil salinities to those of subsp. australasica but under different climates: subsp. eucalyptifolia (salinity 30 ppt, wet tropics) and subsp. marina (sal...

A novel framework is presented for the analysis of ecophysiological field measurements and modelling. The hypothesis 'leaves minimise the summed unit costs of transpiration and carboxylation' predicts leaf-internal/ambient CO2 ratios (ci /ca ) and slopes of maximum carboxylation rate (Vcmax ) or leaf nitrogen (Narea ) vs. stomatal conductance. Analysis of data on woody species from contrasting ...

Both engineered hydraulic systems and plant hydraulic systems are protected against failure by resistance, reparability, and redundancy. A basic rule of reliability engineering is that the level of independent redundancy should increase with increasing risk of fatal system failure. Here we show that hydraulic systems of plants function as predicted by this engineering rule. Hydraulic systems of...

[1] The overall water balance and the sensitivity of watershed runoff to changes in climate are investigated using national databases of climate and streamflow for 1,337 watersheds in the U.S. We document that 1% changes in precipitation result in 1.5–2.5% changes in watershed runoff, depending upon the degree of buffering by storage processes and other factors. Unlike previous research, our ap...

1. Definitions 1.1. Types of Aridity 1.2. Levels of Aridity 2. Paleoperspective 3. People and Land Use in Arid Lands 3.1. Foragers/Hunter–gatherers 3.2. Agriculturists 3.3. Pastoralists 4. Geomorphology of Arid and Semiarid Lands 5. Biological Diversity in Arid Lands 5.1. Arid and Semiarid Lands Plants and their Uses 5.2. The Future of the Conservation of Wild Plants in Arid Regions 6. Climatic...

The monitoring data of a micrometeorological station in Lecce (Southern Italy, Puglia region, Salento Peninsula) were used with the aim interpreting variations groundwater level shallow aquifer as function hydrometeorological forcing. For this scope, aridity index (AI) was calculated to evaluate surface-water stress. Although results indicated moderate drought during 2019–2020 hydrological year...