Increased water-use efficiency and reduced CO₂ uptake by plants during droughts at a continental-scale.

ABSTRACT: Severe droughts in the Northern Hemisphere cause widespread decline of agricultural yield, reduction of forest carbon uptake, and increased CO₂ growth rates in the atmosphere. Plants respond to droughts by partially closing their stomata to limit their evaporative water loss, at the expense of carbon uptake by photosynthesis. This trade-off maximizes their water-use efficiency, as measured for many individual plants under laboratory conditions and field experiments. Here we analyze the ¹³C/¹²C stable isotope ratio in atmospheric CO₂ (reported as δ¹³C) to provide new observational evidence of the impact of droughts on the water-use efficiency across areas of millions of km² and spanning one decade of recent climate variabilit

SUBMITTER: Peters W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6179136 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature