It’s not too late to submit your abstract to:
EP044 Tree, Water, Regolith and Rock: The Role of Roots and Plant Hydraulics in Critical Zone Processes
Session Description:
Plants affect weathering, sediment mobilization, and hillslope form by exuding weathering reagents, forming fractures, anchoring sediment, and altering hydrologic fluxes on different scales. In turn, plant growth is limited by exogenous factors including soil depth, preexisting fractures, or nutrients/water. These processes and feedback have yet to be integrated into a holistic/predictive model of ‘co-evolution’ of the physical environment and functional biology of the critical zone. Incomplete knowledge of couplings and feedbacks between hydrological, geochemical, geomorphic, and biological processes limits progress. Hydrology provides an avenue to link these individual processes, which may be mediated through the plant hydraulic system. Root-mediated mechanical and geochemical processes are involved in all aspects of hillslope evolution. Feedbacks may arise by structuring of plant communities by the physical environment (water/nutrient availability, and substrate stability). Contributions across the disciplines exploring these connections through empirical, experimental or theoretical/modeling work on interactions of plants and environment are welcome.
Invited presenters:
- Elizabeth Hasenmueller (Saint Louis U) on "The Weathering of Rock to Regolith: Activity of Deep Roots in Bedrock Fractures"
- Susan Schwinning (Texas State)
Conveners: Junyan Ding (Calgary), Suzanne Anderson (U Colorado), and Edward Johnson (Calgary)
The abstract deadline is August 1. Submit here: https://fallmeeting.agu.org/2018/abstract-submissions/