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Plant Water Relations

  • Chapter
Plant Physiological Ecology

Abstract

Although water is the most abundant molecule on the earth’s surface, the availability of water is the factor that most strongly restricts terrestrial plant production on a global scale. Low water availability limits the productivity of many natural ecosystems, particularly in dry climates (Fig. 1). In addition, losses in crop yield due to water stress exceed losses due to all other biotic and environmental factors combined (Boyer 1985). Regions where rainfall is abundant and fairly evenly distributed over the growing season, such as in the wet tropics, have lush vegetation. Where summer droughts are frequent and severe, forests are replaced by grasslands, as in the Asian steppes and North American prairies. Further decrease in rainfall results in semidesert, with scattered shrubs, and finally deserts. Even the effects of temperature are partly exerted through water relations because rates of evaporation and transpiration are correlated with temperature.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Utrecht University, 3584 CA, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Hans Lambers Ph.D. & Thijs L. Pons Ph.D.

  2. Plant Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Western Australia, 6907, Nedlands, WA, Australia

    Hans Lambers Ph.D.

  3. Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska, 99775, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    F. Stuart Chapin III Ph.D.

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  1. Hans Lambers Ph.D.
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  2. F. Stuart Chapin III Ph.D.
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  3. Thijs L. Pons Ph.D.
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Lambers, H., Chapin, F.S., Pons, T.L. (1998). Plant Water Relations. In: Plant Physiological Ecology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2855-2_3

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