scholarly journals Increase in Absolute Leaf Water Content Tends to Keep Pace with That of Leaf Dry Mass—Evidence from Bamboo Plants

Symmetry ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 1345
Author(s):  
Weiwei Huang ◽  
Gadi V. P. Reddy ◽  
Yueyi Li ◽  
Jørgen Bo Larsen ◽  
Peijian Shi

Leaves, as the most important photosynthetic organ of plants, are intimately associated with plant function and adaptation to environmental changes. The scaling relationship of the leaf dry mass (or the fresh mass) vs. leaf surface area has been referred to as “diminishing returns”, suggesting that the leaf area fails to increase in proportion to leaf dry mass (or fresh mass). However, previous studies used materials across different families, and there is lack of studies testing whether leaf fresh mass is proportional to the leaf dry mass for the species in the same family, and examining the influence of the scaling of leaf dry mass vs. fresh mass on two kinds of diminishing returns based on leaf dry mass and fresh mass. Bamboo plants (Poaceae: Bambusoideae) are good materials for doing such a study, which have astonishingly similar leaf shapes across species. Bamboo leaves have a typical parallel venation pattern. In general, a parallel venation pattern tends to produce a more stable symmetrical leaf shape than the pinnate and palmate venation patterns. The symmetrical parallel veins enable leaves to more regularly hold water, which is more likely to result in a proportional relationship between the leaf dry mass and absolute water content, which consequently determines whether the scaling exponent of the leaf dry mass vs. area is significantly different from (or the same as) that of the leaf fresh mass vs. area. In the present study, we used the data of 101 bamboo species, cultivars, forms and varieties (referred to as 101 (bamboo) taxa below for convenience) to analyze the scaling relationships between the leaf dry mass and area, and between leaf fresh mass and area. We found that the confidence intervals of the scaling exponents of the leaf fresh mass vs. dry mass of 68 out of the 101 taxa included unity, which indicates that for most bamboo species (67.3%), the increase in leaf water mass keeps pace with that of leaf dry mass. There was a significant scaling relationship between either leaf dry mass or fresh mass, and the leaf surface area for each studied species. We found that there was no significant difference between the scaling exponent of the leaf dry mass vs. leaf area and that of the leaf fresh mass vs. leaf area when the leaf dry mass was proportional to the leaf fresh mass. The goodness of fit to the linearized scaling relationship of the leaf fresh mass vs. area was better than that of the leaf dry mass vs. area for each of the 101 bamboo taxa. In addition, there were significant differences in the normalized constants of the leaf dry mass vs. fresh mass among the taxa (i.e., the differences in leaf water content), which implies the difference in the adaptabilities to different environments across the taxa.

Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 1010
Author(s):  
Mengdi Liu ◽  
Karl J. Niklas ◽  
Ülo Niinemets ◽  
Dirk Hölscher ◽  
Long Chen ◽  
...  

The scaling relationship between either leaf dry or fresh mass (M) and surface area (A) can reflect the photosynthetic potential and efficiency of light harvesting in different broad-leaved plants. In growing leaves, lamina area expansion is typically finished before the completion of leaf biomass accumulation, thereby affecting the M vs. A scaling relationship at different developmental stages of leaves (e.g., young vs. adult leaves). In addition, growing plants can have different-sized leaves at different plant ages, potentially also changing M vs. A scaling. Furthermore, leaf shape can also change during the course of ontogeny and modify the M vs. A scaling relationship. Indeed, the effect of seasonal changes in leaf shape on M vs. A scaling has not been examined in any previous studies known to us. The study presented here was conducted using two deciduous tree species: Alangium chinense (saplings forming leaves through the growing season) and Liquidambar formosana (adult trees producing only one leaf flush in spring) that both have complex but nearly bilaterally symmetrical leaf shapes. We determined (i) whether leaf shapes differed in spring versus summer; (ii) whether the M vs. A scaling relationship varied over time; and (iii) whether there is a link between leaf shape and the scaling exponent governing the M vs. A scaling relationship. The data indicated that (i) the leaf dissection index in spring was higher than that in summer for both species (i.e., leaf-shape complexity decreased from young to adult leaves); (ii) there was a significant difference in the numerical value of the scaling exponent of leaf perimeter vs. area between leaves sampled at the two dates; (iii) spring leaves had a higher water content than summer leaves, and the scaling exponents of dry mass vs. area and fresh mass vs. area were all greater than unity; (iv) the scaling relationship between fresh mass and area was statistically more robust than that between leaf dry mass and area; (v) the scaling exponents of leaf dry and fresh mass vs. area of A. chinense leaves in spring were greater than those in summer (i.e., leaves in younger plants tend to be larger than leaves in older plants), whereas, for the adult trees of L. formosana, the scaling exponent in spring was smaller than that in summer, indicating increases in leaf dry mass per unit area with increasing leaf age; and (vi) leaf shape appears not to be related to the scaling relationship between either leaf dry or fresh mass and area, but is correlated with the scaling exponent of leaf perimeter vs. area (which tends to be a ½ power function). These trends indicate that studies of leaf morphometrics and scaling relationships must consider the influence of seasonality and plant age in sampling of leaves and the interpretation of data.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Kovar ◽  
Marian Brestic ◽  
Oksana Sytar ◽  
Viliam Barek ◽  
Pavol Hauptvogel ◽  
...  

Nondestructive assessment of water content and water stress in plants is an important component in the rational use of crop irrigation management in precision agriculture. Spectral measurements of light reflectance in the UV/VIS/NIR region (350–1075 nm) from individual leaves were acquired under a rapid dehydration protocol for validation of the remote sensing water content assessment in soybean plants. Four gravimetrical approaches of leaf water content assessment were used: relative water content (RWC), foliar water content as percent of total fresh mass (FWCt), foliar water content as percent of dry mass (FWCd), and equivalent water thickness (EWT). Leaf desiccation resulted in changes in optical properties with increasing relative reflectance at wavelengths between 580 and 700 nm. The highest positive correlations were observed for the relations between the photochemical reflectance index (PRI) and EWT (rP = 0.860). Data analysis revealed that the specific water absorption band at 970 nm showed relatively weaker sensitivity to water content parameters. The prediction of leaf water content parameters from PRI measurements was better with RMSEs of 12.4% (rP = 0.786), 9.1% (rP = 0.736), and 0.002 (rP = 0.860) for RWC, FWCt, and EWT (p < 0.001), respectively. The results may contribute to more efficient crop water management and confirmed that EWT has a statistically closer relationship with reflectance indices than other monitored water parameters.


1970 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. P. HUGHES ◽  
K. E. COCKSHULL ◽  
O. V. S. HEATH

Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiwei Huang ◽  
David Ratkowsky ◽  
Cang Hui ◽  
Ping Wang ◽  
Jialu Su ◽  
...  

Leaf dry mass per unit area (LMA) is considered to represent the photosynthetic capacity, which actually implies a hypothesis that foliar water mass (leaf fresh weight minus leaf dry weight) is proportional to leaf dry weight during leaf growth. However, relevant studies demonstrated that foliar water mass disproportionately increases with increasing leaf dry weight. Although scaling relationships of leaf dry weight vs. leaf area for many plants were investigated, few studies compared the scaling relationship based on leaf dry weight with that based on leaf fresh weight. In this study, we used the data of three families (Lauraceae, Oleaceae, and Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae) with five broad-leaved species for each family to examine whether using different measures for leaf biomass (i.e., dry weight and fresh weight) can result in different fitted results for the scaling relationship between leaf biomass and area. Reduced major axis regression was used to fit the log-transformed data of leaf biomass and area, and the bootstrap percentile method was used to test the significance of the difference between the estimate of the scaling exponent of leaf dry weight vs. area and that of leaf fresh weight vs. area. We found that there were five species across three families (Phoebe sheareri (Hemsl.) Gamble, Forsythia viridissima Lindl., Osmanthus fragrans Lour., Chimonobambusa sichuanensis (T.P. Yi) T.H. Wen, and Hibanobambusa tranquillans f. shiroshima H. Okamura) whose estimates of the scaling exponent of leaf dry weight to area and that of leaf fresh weight to area were not significantly different, whereas, for the remaining ten species, both estimates were significantly different. For the species in the same family whose leaf shape is narrow (i.e., a low ratio of leaf width to length) the estimates of two scaling exponents are prone to having a significant difference. There is also an allometric relationship between leaf dry weight and fresh weight, which means that foliar water mass disproportionately increases with increased leaf dry weight. In addition, the goodness of fit for the scaling relationship of leaf fresh weight vs. area is better than that for leaf dry weight vs. area, which suggests that leaf fresh mass might be more able to reflect the physiological functions of leaves associated with photosynthesis and respiration than leaf dry mass. The above conclusions are based on 15 broad-leaved species, although we believe that those conclusions may be potentially extended to other plants with broad and flat leaves.


Pedosphere ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chun-Jiang ZHAO ◽  
Ji-Hua WANG ◽  
Liang-Yun LIU ◽  
Wen-Jiang HUANG ◽  
Qi-Fa ZHOU

Author(s):  
Rahul Raj ◽  
Jeffrey P. Walker ◽  
Vishal Vinod ◽  
Rohit Pingale ◽  
Balaji Naik ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 2634
Author(s):  
Qiyuan Wang ◽  
Yanling Zhao ◽  
Feifei Yang ◽  
Tao Liu ◽  
Wu Xiao ◽  
...  

Vegetation heat-stress assessment in the reclamation areas of coal gangue dumps is of great significance in controlling spontaneous combustion; through a temperature gradient experiment, we collected leaf spectra and water content data on alfalfa. We then obtained the optimal spectral features of appropriate leaf water content indicators through time series analysis, correlation analysis, and Lasso regression analysis. A spectral feature-based long short-term memory (SF-LSTM) model is proposed to estimate alfalfa’s heat stress level; the live fuel moisture content (LFMC) varies significantly with time and has high regularity. Correlation analysis of the raw spectrum, first-derivative spectrum, spectral reflectance indices, and leaf water content data shows that LFMC and spectral data were the most strongly correlated. Combined with Lasso regression analysis, the optimal spectral features were the first-derivative spectral value at 1661 nm (abbreviated as FDS (1661)), RVI (1525,1771), DVI (1412,740), and NDVI (1447,1803). When the classification strategies were divided into three categories and the time sequence length of the spectral features was set to five consecutive monitoring dates, the SF-LSTM model had the highest accuracy in estimating the heat stress level in alfalfa; the results provide an important theoretical basis and technical support for vegetation heat-stress assessment in coal gangue dump reclamation areas.


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