This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A plant's roots do much of their work out of sight, pulling in water and nutrients and holding the plant in place. That makes it hard to see how plants respond when conditions underground change, and how a warming climate affects them.
New Dartmouth-led studies look at the strategies plants use below the surface to adapt and survive. "Changes in climate profoundly affect trees and other plant life, with very real impacts on almost every ecosystem—including subterranean ecosystems," says Thomas Muratore, first author of a new study published in New Phytologist and a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Shersingh Joseph Tumber-Dávila, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Studies. "Research into belowground plant systems is critical to helping us make informed decisions in fields ranging from conservation to agriculture." Muratore's study focused on "exudation," which occurs when plants release soluble carbon compounds from the tips of their roots.
This process effectively feeds microbes in the surrounding soil, making them more active. Those microbes then break down the soil, which makes more nutrients available for the roots to absorb. Scientists are beginning to understand the basics of exudation.
How climate change might affect it is still an open question, with consequences for both plants and soil. "The study I led examines how two common tree species respond to higher temperatures and to higher amounts of nitrogen in the soil—both of which can be byproducts of climate change," says Muratore. "The results were surprising." Muratore and his collaborators thought warming and nitrogen addition would both increase all kinds of plant activity, so exudation would increase across the board.
The researchers found that the size and shape of the root systems didn't change at all, and that higher temperatures actually drove down exudation. "Increased nitrogen levels increased exudation, regardless of temperature," Muratore says. "But we're unlikely to see nitrogen levels go up everywhere.
So exudation will likely decrease in places where temperatures go up but nitrogen levels don't—and that means the dynamic interaction between plants and soil in those places will decline." The study Muratore led focused on one specific root function. Two other recent papers take a much broader view. Both grew out of Tumber-Dávila's work with sUnderfoot, an international working group based at the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research.
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