Water transport in trees: current perspectives, new insights and some controversies

Abstract

This review emphasizes recent developments and controversies related to the uptake, transport and loss of water by trees. Comparisons of the stable isotope composition of soil and xylem water have provided new and sometimes unexpected insights concerning spatial and temporal partitioning of soil water by roots. Passive, hydraulic redistribution of water from moister to drier portions of the soil profile via plant root systems may have a substantial impact on vertical profiles of soil water distribution, partitioning of water within and among species, and on ecosystem water balance. The recent development of a technique for direct measurement of pressure in individual xylem elements of intact, transpiring plants elicited a number of challenges to the century-old cohesion-tension theory. The ongoing debate over mechanisms of long-distance water transport has stimulated an intense interest in the phenomenon and mechanisms of embolism repair. Rather than embolism being essentially irreversible, it now appears that there is a dynamic balance between embolism formation and repair throughout the day and that daily release of water from the xylem via cavitation may serve to stabilize leaf water balance by minimizing the temporal imbalance between water supply and demand. Leaf physiology is closely linked to hydraulic architecture and hydraulic perturbations, but the precise nature of the signals to which stomata respond remains to be elucidated. When water transport in trees is studied at multiple scales from single leaves to the whole organism, considerable functional convergence in regulation of water use among phylogenetically diverse species is revealed.