The reasons why the range size of closely related species often varies significantly have intrigued scientists for many years. Among other hypotheses, species with high trait variation were suggested to occupy more diverse environments, have more continuity in their distributions, and consequently have larger range sizes. Here, using 34 tree species of lowlands tropical rainforest in southern C...

Within the last years a lot of effort has been made to improve irrigation efficiency and early drought stress detection by using various remote sensing techniques. In the present study two different species of wheat (Triticum aestivum and Triticum durum), cultivated in a growth chamber, were used to investigate the effects of drought occurring at different phenological stages. Plant physiologic...

Green leaves face two fundamental challenges (i.e., carbon fixation and stress tolerance) during their lifespan. However, the relationships between leaf production potential and leaf tolerance potential have not been explicitly tested with a broad range of plant species in the same environment. To do so, we conducted a field investigation based on 107 woody plants grown in a common garden and c...

Strong positive correlations between the maximum rate of canopy photosynthesis, canopy-averaged foliar nitrogen concentration, and canopy albedo have been shown in previous studies. While leaf-level relationships between photosynthetic capacity and foliar nitrogen are well documented, it is not clear whether leaf-level relationships between solarweighted reflectance and nitrogen underlie the ca...

Silicon (Si) amendment to plants can confer enhanced resistance to herbivores. In the present study, the physiological and cytological mechanisms underlying the enhanced resistance of plants with Si addition were investigated for one of the most destructive rice pests in Asian countries, the rice leaf folder, Cnaphalocrocis medinalis (Guenée). Activities of defense-related enzymes, superoxide d...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Certain lines of wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum) are more tolerant of salinity than others. The physiological basis of this difference is examined in a comparative study of a saline-tolerant and saline-intolerant line that emphasizes plant water relations. METHODOLOGY Effects of salt-treatment (75 mM maximum) extending from a few hours to 3 weeks were quantified in 8-day-...

Vegetation moisture and dry matter content are important indicators in predicting the behavior of fire and it is widely used in fire spread models. In this study, leaf fuel moisture content such as Live Fuel Moisture Content (LFMC), Leaf Relative Water Content (RWC), Dead Fuel Moisture Content (DFMC), and Leaf Dry Matter Content (LDMC) (hereinafter known as moisture content indices (MCI)) were ...

Article history: Received 12 October 2015 Received in revised form 21 January 2016 Accepted 12 February 2016 Available online 1 March 2016 Radiative transfer models have long been used to characterize the foliar content at the leaf and canopy levels. However, they still do not apply well to close-range imaging spectroscopy, especially because directional effects are usually not taken into accou...