As plant tissues dehydrate, water transport efficiency declines, a process typically attributed to air obstruction (embolism) in the xylem. Trifiló et al. (pages 5029– 5039) dissect leaf hydraulic vulnerability and show that both xylem and living tissues may be important. If confirmed and clarified, an important role for outside-xylem hydraulic decline will change our understanding of how plant...

Bundle sheath extensions (BSEs) are key features of leaf structure with currently little-understood functions. To test the hypothesis that BSEs reduce the hydraulic resistance from the bundle sheath to the epidermis (r(be)) and thereby accelerate hydropassive stomatal movements, we compared stomatal responses with reduced humidity and leaf excision among 20 species with heterobaric or homobaric...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Morphological diversity of leaves is usually quantified with geometrical characters, while in many cases a simple set of biophysical parameters are involved in constraining size and shape. One of the main physiological functions of the leaf is transpiration and thus one can expect that leaf hydraulic parameters can be used to predict potential morphologies, although with the...

It is common practice in industry to monitor hydraulic fracturing jobs by picking major, micro-earthquake events in seismograms whose source locations form a spatial pattern used for interpreting induced fractures. Surprisingly, controversy still surrounds the interpretation of these scattered, discrete events. Many authors conclude that hydraulic fractures are generated by shear failure events...

Leaf hydraulics, gas exchange and carbon storage in Pinus edulis and Juniperus monosperma, two tree species on opposite ends of the isohydry-anisohydry spectrum, were analyzed to examine relationships between hydraulic function and carbohydrate dynamics. Leaf hydraulic vulnerability, leaf water potential (Ψl ), leaf hydraulic conductance (Kleaf ), photosynthesis (A), stomatal conductance (gs) a...

Sediment erosion not only reduces efficiency and life of hydropower turbines but also causes problems in operation and maintenance. Several factors are responsible for this erosion in hydro turbine components. This paper presents the sediment erosion types in hydraulic turbines and their components based upon an extensive literature review and the field observation at Cahua hydropower plant, Pe...