Diverse Plant Water-Use Strategies Make Forests More Resilient to Extreme Drought
Published:21 Dec.2021 Source:University of Arizona
To paint a clearer picture of how global climate change will affect Earth's ecosystems, a team of 80 international research scientists set out to complete an unparalleled experiment: forcing the world's only enclosed rainforest -- housed in the University of Arizona's Biosphere 2 -- through a four-month-long controlled drought and recovery.
Their findings, published this week in the journal Science, revealed a roughly 70% drop in the rainforest's carbon storage -- speaking to concerns surrounding forests' ability to capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as climate change progresses. However, an intricate web of water-use strategies and soil interactions were found to support the forest's stability in the face of extreme drought.