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Water Relations

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Plant Ecology

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Abstract

This chapter analyses water as an environmental and biotic factor for plant life.

As an introduction, the global aspects of availability of water are described together with the physical basis for the water balance along latitudinal gradients. On the basis of this background, water transport in the soil–plant continuum is described on a physical basis of capillary flows and diffusive flows, which are regulated by plants via anatomical features in the stem, as well as by the responses of the stomata to changes in the environment and to changes in the plant water status. Part of the water flow between the soil and the atmosphere is the circulation of water within the plant via the xylem–phloem system, which appears essential for plant survival.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany

    Ernst-Detlef Schulze

  2. Department of Plant Physiology, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Erwin Beck & Stephan Clemens

  3. Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Nina Buchmann

  4. Department of Biogeography, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Klaus Müller-Hohenstein

  5. Chair of Geobotany, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Michael Scherer-Lorenzen

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  1. Ernst-Detlef Schulze
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  2. Erwin Beck
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  5. Klaus Müller-Hohenstein
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Schulze, ED., Beck, E., Buchmann, N., Clemens, S., Müller-Hohenstein, K., Scherer-Lorenzen, M. (2019). Water Relations. In: Plant Ecology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56233-8_10

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