The rooted world beneath our feet : a global analysis of the size, shape, and allometry of plant root systems
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The roots of woody plants, trees and shrubs, account for 39% of woody plant biomass, and herbaceous plants have greater than 50% of their biomass belowground on average, making plant roots a major component of the terrestrial carbon pool. Roots also act as a terrestrial plumbing network, moving water, carbon, and nutrients throughout the environment. Given the important role roots play in our earth system, there is still much we do not know about the belowground organs of plants. This dissertation focuses on understanding the size and shape of plant root systems using a variety of tools and techniques in order to study a system that is immensely difficult to directly observe and measure. Specifically, I 1) created a new version of the Root Systems of Individual Plants (RSIP) database to understand the maximum depth and width of root systems across the globe, 2) developed an image analysis pipeline to investigate the above- to belowground allometry of woody plant volume and biomass, and 3) used a forested drought manipulation experiment to unearth the vertical root niche partitioning of co-dominant trees undergoing drought stress. Through my graduate work I found that roots show considerable variation in their depth and spread, with deeper-narrower root systems in arid climates and wider-shallower root systems in humid climates. I also found that plants can often be much larger belowground compared to aboveground, with the width of plants belowground being 2.25 times wider than the width of plants aboveground. Furthermore, 86% of the volume taken-up by plants is belowground. I also found that co-dominant trees in a northeastern forest portray different rooting strategies when facing drought-stress. However, when facing drought stress, many of the root profiles had an increase in roots at deeper depths, shifting their average rooting depth distribution by 80% towards deeper soil layers. Beyond the creation of new plant size and shape data, the analyses contained within this dissertation greatly expands on our understanding of the form and function of plant root systems.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Tumber-Davila, Shersingh Joseph | |
|---|---|---|
| Degree committee member | Fendorf, Scott | |
| Degree committee member | Jackson, Rob | |
| Degree committee member | Schenk, H. Jochen | |
| Thesis advisor | Fendorf, Scott | |
| Thesis advisor | Jackson, Rob | |
| Thesis advisor | Schenk, H. Jochen | |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Environmental Earth System Science |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Shersingh Joseph Tumber-Dávila. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Environmental Earth System Science. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/cy646jb5501 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Shersingh Joseph Tumber-Davila
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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