Year: 2004
Type: article
Abstract: Millions of hectares of Eucalyptus are intensively managed for wood production worldwide, but the ecophysiology of resource limitation on growth remains poorly quantified.We investigated the production ecology of a 3.4-to 5.4year-old plantation of clonal Eucalypus grandis x urophylla in northeastern Brazil on a sandy Oxisol during two years (one wet, and one with normal rainfall).We measured wood production and estimated water use (transpired water) in control and irrigated treatments.Water supply limited growth; wood biomass increased from 36.6 Mg ha -1 for both treatments to 107.0 and 141.0 Mg ha -1 after 2 years for the control and irrigated plots.Across both years, irrigation increased wood productivity by 52% (42.8 Mg ha -1 yr -1 versus 28.1 Mg ha -1 yr -1 ).Water use was similar between the control and irrigated treatments during the wet year, but irrigation increased water use by 37% in the normal rainfall year.The efficiency of water use (wood production per m 3 of transpired water) in the control treatment increased from the normal year (1.8 kg wood/m 3 of water) to the wet year (3.2 wood/m 3 of water), and irrigation increased water use efficiency by 18% in the wet year, 75% in the normal year, and 32% across both years.In combination with prior work on water use efficiency across a geographic gradient in rainfall, these irrigation results indicate that increasing water use efficiency should be expected with increasing water use by Eucalyptus.
Source: Bosque (Valdivia)
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Life on land
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2011324862