Professor Stanford University Stanford, California, United States
New data and experiments are helping ecologists answer fundamental questions about the sizes and shapes of plants above and belowground. For instance, how large is a plant’s canopy volume compared with the volume of soil the plant explores belowground? How do dimensions such as canopy height and width and maximum rooting depth and lateral spread change along environmental gradients of moisture, temperature, and other factors? To what extent do plants with different growth forms explore different space above and belowground? I will discuss recent field work and data analysis as well as indirect assessments though remotely sensed data such as solar-induced fluorescence. Combined with hydrologic data, remotely sensed data can be used to estimate water storage and water uptake by plants at regional to global scales. Our recent work, for instance, suggests that plant-available water is used below 2-m depth across at least one third of the Earth’s vegetated surface.
