Leaf area, light transmission, roots and leaf damage in nine tropical plant communities

Ewel, John J.; Benedict, Faye; Berish, Cory W.; Brown, Becky J.; Gliessman, Stephen R.; Amador, M.; Bermúdez, Radaméz; Martinez, A. L.; Miranda, Roberto; Price, Norman

doi:10.1016/0304-3746(82)90023-3

Cited by 55 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…These studies have dealt with a broad array of topics, including root biomass (Bartholomew et al, 1953;Berish, 1983;Cornforth, 1970;Greenland and Kowal, 1960;Huttel, 1975;Jenik, 1971;Lawson et al, 1970;Murphy and Lugo, 1986;Nye and Greenland, 1960;Raich, 1980b;Singh and Singh, 1981;Stark and Spratt, 1977;Srivastava et al, 1987), root surface area (Berish, 1982;Ewel et al, 1982), root growth and development (Jordan and Escalante, 1980;Sanford, 1987;St. John, 1983;, and species-specific root system architecture (Jenik, 1978).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Root development in simple and complex tropical successional ecosystems

Berish

Ewel

1988

Plant Soil

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Fine and coarse root mass and fine root surface area were studied during 5 yr following the felling and burning of a tropical forest near Turrialba, Costa Rica. Five experimental ecosystems were established: 1) natural successional vegetation, 2) successional vegetation enriched by seed applications, 3) imitation of succession (built by substituting investigator-selected species for natural colonizers), 4) monocultures (two maize crops followed by cassava and Cordia alliodora), and 5) a bare plot.Fine roots grew rapidly in all treatments during the first 15 wk, at which time there were 75 gm -2 in the monoculture and 140g m -2 in the enriched and natural successions. Subsequent growth was slower, and fine-root mass decreased during the first dry season. After 5 yr coarse root mass to a depth of 85 cm was about 800, 1370, and 1530 g m -2 in the succession, enriched succession and imitation of succession, respectively. At the final harvest, the 3.5yr-old C. alliodora plantation had 1000gm -2 of coarse-root biomass. Roots < 1 mm in diameter were concentrated in the upper 5 cm of soil and accounted for most fine-root surface area. Total fine-root surface area was greatest in the enriched successional vegetation and usually lowest in the monoculture.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Root development in simple and complex tropical successional ecosystems

Berish

Ewel

1988

Plant Soil

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“…However, only rarely has the distribution of roots of agricultural crops and trees been studied simultaneously and under similar conditions [e.g. 6]. Furthermore, most often are data on the total root mass given, while it is mainly the fine roots that are responsible for water and nutrient uptake, and therefore of interest in this context.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The vertical distribution of fine roots of five tree species and maize in Morogoro, Tanzania

Jonsson,

Fidjeland,

Maghembe

et al. 1988

Agroforest Syst

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Abstract. In order to assess the possibility of root competition in agroforestry, the vertical distribution of fine roots (< 2 mm in diameter) of five tree species in pure two-year-old stands was compared to that of mature maize.Cassia siamea, Eucalyptus tereticornis, Leucaena leucocephala and Prosopis chilensis had a rooting pattern similar to that of maize, i.e. a slow decline in fine root mass from 0-100cm soil depth. Eucalyptus camaldulensis had its roots evenly distributed down to 100cm. On an average, the fine root biomass of the tree species was roughly twice as that of the maize. We conclude that the studied tree species are likely to compete with maize and other crops with a similar rooting pattern for nutrients and water.

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“…For the case of three samples, one core was extracted within the row, another midway between rows, and the third at a random location (cf. Ewel et al 1982), excepting the within-row area and locations already sampled by the first two cores, resulting in 16×23=368 combinations. For all cases with more than three core samples, each additional core was chosen randomly, but avoiding duplication of locations where cores had already been extracted.…”

Section: Plotmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the issue concerning the amount of samples and the proper sampling schemes seems to be unresolved: Most typically for maize crops, about one to five soil cores were extracted per plot (e.g., Wiesler and Horst 1994;Sharratt and McWilliams 2005) and taken either (1) within the plant row and midway between rows (Van Noordwijk et al 1985;Kuchenbuch and Barber 1987;Dwyer et al 1996;Sharratt and McWilliams 2005) or (2) within the row and at one single other location between rows (Ball-Coelho et al 1998). Even one single core location with respect to the plant row has been deemed to represent horizontally averaged RLD (e.g., Gajri et al 1994;Oikeh et al 1999), or one core at a random location relative to the plant row was extracted (Ewel et al 1982).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of a core sampling scheme to characterize root length density of maize

2008

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Information about root distribution is important for characterization and modeling of water and nutrient uptake, biomass, and yield. Due to the heterogeneous distribution of roots in row crops, the reliability and representativeness of estimates of RL and root morphology using core sampling depend on the number of samples and their location. The objectives of this study were to evaluate errors when assessing RLD and root morphology from auger core sampling schemes, to estimate 2D distributions of RLD by auger core sampling, and to assess the number of samples necessary for representative estimates of RLD and RD classes. The reference dataset utilized in this study is based on completely sampled 3D soil monoliths under maize, taken at three different dates (55, 78, and 104 days after planting) and two different row spacings (75 and 37.5 cm). A hypothetical auger core sampling scheme with one core within the row and another midway between rows mostly overpredicted total RLD. Bias was lower when using an 1:3 weighting scheme. Estimation of 2D vertical RLD distribution by calculating the ratio of RLD in the plant row to RLD midway between rows yielded reasonable estimates only when the average of eight cores was used. An assessment of the proportions of RD classes yielded high bias values, even when using the average of eight cores. An analysis of sampling errors using successively more cores revealed that for total RLD, to attain a bias <20%, more than ten samples would be necessary. This suggests that the number of core samples taken in many root studies could be too low. This bias was even higher when taking core samples for estimation of proportions of RD classes, where a reasonably low bias between estimated and "true" values could not be attained in this study even with ten core samples. Consequently, when taking samples for measurement of root morphological parameters, more detailed and site-adapted sampling schemes have to be devised. For estimating total averaged RLD, two core Plant Soil (2009) 316:205-215

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Leaf area, light transmission, roots and leaf damage in nine tropical plant communities

Cited by 55 publications

References 12 publications

Root development in simple and complex tropical successional ecosystems

Root development in simple and complex tropical successional ecosystems

The vertical distribution of fine roots of five tree species and maize in Morogoro, Tanzania

Evaluation of a core sampling scheme to characterize root length density of maize

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