How do trees die? A test of the hydraulic failure and carbon starvation hypotheses

By Sanna A. Sevanto, Nathan G. McDowell, L. Dickman, R. Pangle, W. Pockman. Plant, Cell and Environment, 2013

766 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Despite decades of research on plant drought tolerance, the physiological mechanisms by which trees succumb to drought are still under debate. We report results from an experiment designed to separate and test the current leading hypotheses of tree mortality. We show that piñon pine (Pinus edulis) trees can die of both hydraulic failure and carbon starvation, and that during drought, the loss of conductivity and carbohydrate reserves can also co-occur. Hydraulic constraints on plant carbohydrate use determined survival time: turgor loss in the phloem limited access to carbohydrate reserves, but hydraulic control of respiration prolonged survival. Our data also demonstrate that hydraulic failure may be associated with loss of adequate tissue carbohydrate content required for osmoregulation, which then promotes failure to maintain hydraulic integrity.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7f12e298a7d8f35111d51ee9917fab57e54e08b6

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Citations in the corpus

Modeling plant–water interactions: an ecohydrological overview from the cell to the global scale (2016, background): “Recent evidence supports an earlier occurrence of hydraulic failure and a consequent blockage of NSC transport.(238,246) Regardless of the exact mechanisms, a severe and extended drought unavoidably leads to plant mortality, a phenomenon occurring in many ecosystems worldwide, even in those that are”
Emergent insects, pathogens and drought shape changing patterns in oak decline in North America and Europe (2015, background): “Hydraulic dysfunction is not likely to be the single cause of oak mortality during decline, because trees that die solely from hydraulic failure in response to drought often do so quickly (e.g. Sevanto et al., 2014).”
Interdependence of chronic hydraulic dysfunction and canopy processes can improve integrated models of tree response to drought (2015, background): “A single pool of nonstructural carbon (NSC) was defined with initial values assuming NSC represented 10% of leaf and root carbon and 4% of sapwood carbon [Sevanto et al., 2013], and with the total carbon pools set allometrically [Plaut et al., 2012].”
Multiple strategies for drought survival among woody plant species (2016, background): “atal behaviour (McDowell et al. 2008; Sevanto et al. 2014).”
Nonstructural carbon in woody plants. (2014, background): “Hydraulic failure in Pinus seedlings subjected to drought may also be associated with a loss of adequate tissue carbohydrate content required for osmoregulation (118).”
Are Scots pine forest edges particularly prone to drought-induced mortality? (2018, background): “Finally, we want to mention the possibilities of hydraulic failure and phloem transport failure causing Scots pine die-back (Sevanto 2014, Sevanto et al 2014) but it is not clear how this could explain the observed long-lasting growth-decline of dying trees nor would it help to understand the…”
Drought tolerance as predicted by leaf water potential at turgor loss point varies strongly across species within an Amazonian forest (2015, unknown): “…depend on drought response and the stability of the hydraulic func- tion (Tyree & Sperry 1989; Urli et al. 2013), the mobiliza- tion of non-structural carbohydrates and defence metabolism (McDowell 2011; Sevanto et al. 2014), all of which are poorly described (Powell et al. 2013; Xu et al. 2013).”