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Tree growth and water-use in hyper-arid Acacia occurs during the hottest and driest season

  • Physiological ecology - original research
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Abstract

Drought-induced tree mortality has been recently increasing and is expected to increase further under warming climate. Conversely, tree species that survive under arid conditions might provide vital information on successful drought resistance strategies. Although Acacia (Vachellia) species dominate many of the globe’s deserts, little is known about their growth dynamics and water-use in situ. Stem diameter dynamics, leaf phenology, and sap flow were monitored during 3 consecutive years in five Acacia raddiana trees and five Acacia tortilis trees in the Arid Arava Valley, southern Israel (annual precipitation 20–70 mm, restricted to October–May). We hypothesized that stem growth and other tree activities are synchronized with, and limited to single rainfall or flashflood events. Unexpectedly, cambial growth of both Acacia species was arrested during the wet season, and occurred during most of the dry season, coinciding with maximum daily temperatures as high as 45 °C and vapor pressure deficit of up to 9 kPa. Summer growth was correlated with peak sap flow in June, with almost year-round activity and foliage cover. To the best of our knowledge, these are the harshest drought conditions ever documented permitting cambial growth. These findings point to the possibility that summer cambial growth in Acacia under hyper-arid conditions relies on concurrent leaf gas exchange, which is in turn permitted by access to deep soil water. Soil water can support low-density tree populations despite heat and drought, as long as recharge is kept above a minimum threshold.

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Data used in this paper will be archived in Figshare.

Notes

  1. The genus (Acacia) was recently split (Kyalangalilwa et al. 2013) into two different genera, Vachellia and Acacia. While the original name (Acacia = "thorn" in latin) was reserved for the Australian (thornless) Acacia trees, the new name, Vachellia, was reserved for the Acacias from the rest of the world, with thorns. Searching the web science for scientifc papers published from 2015 to June 2016 showed that only 2.6% from the 346 Acacia papers published during this periord chose to use the new name. A short survey among Israel’s botanists also demsonstrates that it is preferable to continue to use the genera name Acacia (see for example Winters et al. 2015; Nothers et al. 2017; Rodger et al. 2018). For these reasons, we chose to use the genera Acacia.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Victor Lukyanov (ARO Volcani Center, Israel) for technical assistance in the field. TK wishes to thank the Benoziyo Fund for the Advancement of Science; Mr. and Mrs. Norman Reiser, together with the Weizmann Center for New Scientists; the Edith and Nathan Goldberg Career Development Chair. CB and DO thank the Bayrische Forschungs (BayFor) Alianz, Germany, for supporting the visits to the Arava. GW thanks the Arava Drainage Authority and the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) for their continued support. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers and to the editor, Russel K. Monson, for their helpful comments and suggestions which significantly improved the MS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Dead Sea-Arava Science Center, Tamar Regional Council, 86910, Neve Zohar, Israel

    Gidon Winters & Gideon Ragowloski

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, Bondo, Kenya

    Dennis Otieno

  3. Institute of Soil, Water, and Environmental Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization, Rishon LeZion, Israel

    Shabtai Cohen

  4. Ecological Modelling, BayCEER, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Christina Bogner

  5. Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Indira Paudel & Tamir Klein

Authors
  1. Gidon Winters
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  2. Dennis Otieno
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  3. Shabtai Cohen
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  4. Christina Bogner
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  5. Gideon Ragowloski
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  6. Indira Paudel
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  7. Tamir Klein
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Contributions

GW initiated the study in 2013, with monitoring operated together with GR. DO, SC, and TK joined the study in 2015, with YW, IR, IP, and CB joining in 2016. TK started the analysis and manuscript drafting, with contributions from all authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tamir Klein.

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Additional information

Communicated by Louis Stephen Santiago.

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Fig. S1. Regional (a) and site (b) map and aerial photo (c) of Wadi Sheizaf (Arava valley, Israel), showing the distribution of trees across the riverbed tree of the monitoring network (b, c). Green circles (b, c) represent single-tree crowns marked for monitoring; Red letters indicate monitoring instruments (b).

Fig. S2. Average GCC (green chromatic coordinate) of the grey scale (in this example, grey 182 [R=G=B=182]) photographed with each tree image (n = 6 ± SD) (black circles). Shown are also the GCC values of individual trees of A. raddiana (a) and A. tortilis (b) (grey circles)

Fig. S3. Acacia diurnal stem circumference variations in Wadi Sheizaf (Arava valley, Israel) during and after the growing season (left and right, respectively). Four trees of Acacia raddiana (red) and two trees of A. tortilis (black) showed relatively large diurnal amplitude during the growing season and only small amplitude outside the season, matching growth with xylem and phloem activity. Stem shrinkage and relaxation during the light and dark hours, respectively, suggest the development of a water potential gradient during the day

Fig. S4. Dead Acacia tortilis trees on 2–3 m wide, 7– m tall cylinders of soil left intact around the tree’s central root system, formed during road construction works in the southern Arava valley, 120 km south of Wadi Sheizaf

Supplementary material 1 (PPTX 1439 kb)

Video S1. “A year in the life of Acacia tortilis”, A lapse-rate video (MP4 66073 kb)

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Winters, G., Otieno, D., Cohen, S. et al. Tree growth and water-use in hyper-arid Acacia occurs during the hottest and driest season. Oecologia 188, 695–705 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-018-4250-z

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