Functional significance of water use efficiency of tropical dry forest species using carbon isotope discrimination
Stable isotope analysis is a powerful tool for assessing plant carbon and water relations and their impact on biogeochemical processes at different scales. Carbon stable isotopes have provided very important information from plants in various fields. For example, stable isotope measurements provide information on the origin of resources acquired by plants, the processes governing resource uptake and transformation, and the physiological and environmental conditions of plant growth. This project proposes an approximation to the water use efficiency from isotopic carbon discrimination data, in order to physiologically characterize the different strategies and characteristics that tropical dry forest trees possess to survive to drought.
The overall objective of this study is to assess the functional significance of WUE to face drought in plants of a tropical dry forest. Specifically, we wish to:
- Evaluate the relationship between the WUE and the behavior of the species planted in a restoration experiment.
- Evaluate the relationship between WUE and other functional traits evaluated in the species studied.
Our research questions are twofold.
1) How is the relationship between the WUE and the species planted in the restoration experiment in the dry forest? How does the WUE group the dry forest species?
2) How is the relationship between WUE and the other evaluated traits? Are they antagonists or complement each other?
