Climate Change: UBC research finds plants are 'leaking' more water than thought
University of B.C. researchers have discovered that plants are leaking more water than initially thought, a discovery that could change the way scientists predict future global warming.
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Sean Michaletz, an assistant professor of botany at UBC’s faculty of science, studies how plants respond to heat.
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His latest research, published in the journal New Phytologist, shows how high temperatures cause the waxy layer on plant leaves to melt, allowing water to escape even when the pores are closed, exacerbating drought conditions.
“What we found here is that under high temperatures, that waxy layer on the leaf melts, kind of like a candle, and it breaks down, so even under high temperatures, even though the pores are closed to prevent water loss, the waxy layer has kind of melted and water can escape,” Michaletz said on Friday.
Scientific understanding is that as temperatures increases, the pores on leaves close, preventing water loss as a water conservation strategy. But Michaletz found that it’s not enough to prevent water loss.
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For the study, researchers tested nine different species of plants that grow at UBC’s Botanical Gardens, including trees such as arbutus and Garry oak, to see how they react to temperatures up to 50 C.
Although they only tested local species of plants, Michaletz said it’s a universal result.
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“The plants we were using were locally available, but the structure of leaves is everywhere. There are differences in their traits, but they all have this waxy layer on them. Some have thicker layers, some have thinner layers. But they all melt the same,”
Photosynthesis is essential for creating a carbon balance, and carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas that’s driving global warming. So to predict climate change, scientists need to know how temperature affects plants and photosynthesis.
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In earlier research, his team studied 200 plant species in Vancouver and found that photosynthesis starts to break down between 40 C and 51 C.
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During the 2021 heat dome, temperatures soared to 49.6 C in Lytton, one day before the village burned down in a wildfire.
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While one heat event is unlikely to kill off the plants, repeated heat waves with temperatures this high will likely have a detrimental affect, he said, adding how a plant responds to the heat depends on the environment.
“When you have a single isolated plant, it’s exposed to the environment, so it can get sun on all of its sides, and it’s exposed to the wind and the air, versus a forest where the plants sort of shelter each other and buffer each other against stress,”
“When you have a single isolated plant, it’s exposed to the environment, so it can get sun on all of its sides, and it’s exposed to the wind and the air, versus a forest where the plants sort of shelter each other and buffer each other against stress,”
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