Dead or dying? Quantifying the point of no return from hydraulic failure in drought-induced tree mortality

• Published in: The New phytologist Vol. 223; no. 4; pp. 1834 - 1843
• Main Authors: Hammond, William M., Yu, Kailiang, Wilson, Luke A., Will, Rodney E., Anderegg, William R. L., Adams, Henry D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Wiley 01.09.2019; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc; John Wiley and Sons Inc
• Subjects: Carbon sinks; climate change; Color; Colour; die-off; Drought; Droughts; ecophysiology; Embolism; Failure; Flight simulation; foliar color; greenhouse experimentation; Greenhouses; Health risks; Hydraulic conductivity; hydraulic failure; Hydraulics; Logistic Models; monitoring; Mortality; Mortality risk; Pine trees; Pinus - physiology; Pinus taeda; Plant Stems - physiology; plant-water relations; prediction; Predictions; Probability theory; risk; saplings; soil-plant interactions; Survival; tree die‐off; tree mortality; tree physiology; Trees; Trees - physiology; Water; Water stress; Xylem; Xylem - physiology; tree mortality; foliar color; drought; tree die-off; hydraulic failure; tree physiology; ecophysiology; climate change

Determining physiological mechanisms and thresholds for climate-driven tree die-off could help improve global predictions of future terrestrial carbon sinks. We directly tested for the lethal threshold in hydraulic failure – an inability to move water due to drought-induced xylem embolism – in a pin...