Abstract
Drought frequency and severity are projected to increase in many regions of the world, yet it remains unclear how mesic forest trees will respond to these novel climate conditions. Experimentally imposing drought in forests at the stand scale is logistically difficult, however, disturbing the hydraulic functioning of individual trees can induce severe water stress and may inform how large trees respond to future droughts. In this study, we manipulated water availability of red spruce (Picea rubens Sarg.) trees by partially or completely severing sapwood, and measured impacts on water relations and photosynthetic efficiency over four months. Trees with total sapwood severed (TOT) experienced a rapid 96.7 % reduction in daily sap flow whereas trees with only partial sapwood severed (PAR; estimated 2–5 % sapwood remaining) and no sapwood severed (CON; phloem girdled control) experienced average reductions of 74.3 % and 4.6%, respectively. Sapwood severing in TOT trees resulted in declining midday shoot water potential compared to PAR and CON trees, but TOT trees did not surpass the water potential indicative of 50 % loss of conductivity until approximately 12 weeks post treatment. At 7 weeks post treatment, TOT trees had 6.8 times lower midday stomatal conductance than PAR and CON trees. Furthermore, branch- and crown-wood water potentials reached extreme values (below measurement threshold of − 7.7 MPa) in TOT trees by the time of tree harvest at 18 weeks but remained high and did not differ between PAR and CON trees. Our results indicate that with minimal intact sapwood, PAR trees still had sufficient hydraulic functioning to avoid water stress, while TOT trees had temporary resistance to water stress likely associated with declines in carbon sequestration and growth. These findings advance our understanding of how red spruce may physiologically respond to periods of water stress in future climates.
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Data availability
Data associated with this study are available at: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4b8gthth7.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Ruth van Kampen, Maddie Eberly, Kathryn Schulz and Casey Olechnowicz for their help in field data collection. The authors are also grateful to Keith Kanoti and the University of Maine Forest Operations Team for their assistance implementing the experimental design, and to Shawn Fraver for his guidance throughout the project and extra assistance with statistical analyses.
Funding
This work was made possible by the Maine Economic Improvement Fund, New England Botanical Club, Penobscot Experimental Forest Research Operations Team, the Iola Hubbard Climate Change Endowment at the University of New Hampshire Earth Systems Research Center, the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station (accessions 1013351 and 1022415), and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. This project is part of McIntire Stennis Project Number ME0-42121 administered through the Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station.
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All authors participated in conceptualization and study design. KF and JW collected the data. KF, DM, MV, and JW analyzed the data. All authors contributed to writing the manuscript.
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French, K.L., Vadeboncoeur, M.A., Asbjornsen, H. et al. Physiological response of mature red spruce trees to partial and complete sapwood severing. Theor. Exp. Plant Physiol. 35, 31–49 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40626-023-00267-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40626-023-00267-3