Professor Margaret Barbour and her collaborators have published a significant new journal article in Plant, Cell and Environment: Can hydraulic design explain patterns of leaf water isotopic enrichment in C3 plants?
Leaf water stable isotopes sit at the heart of a number of techniques to understand global biogeochemical cycles, but scientists remain unable to accurately predict natural variation in isotope enrichment in leaves. Our work improves prediction accuracy by identifying the most accurate model to apply for different types of leaves.
We show that leaf hydraulic design contributes to the development of gradients in oxygen isotope composition within leaf water, and that a priori knowledge of leaf hydraulic design can guide selection of appropriate leaf water isotope models.
