Leander Anderegg

Abstract Whole-plant hydraulic conductance (kplant) quantifies the water transport capacity along the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum, and is a key trait determining plant water use and drought response strategies, as well as an essential parameter in ecosystem models. However, globally harmonised data are lacking.

1 Introduction Seedling recruitment is often the demographic bottleneck that limits how species respond to climate change, because the environmental conditions that allow seedlings to establish and grow (the ‘regeneration niche’) are generally narrower than the conditions adult trees can tolerate (the ‘persistence niche’) (Jackson et al. 2009; Zhu et al. 2012; Dobrowski et al. 2015).

Abstract Our ability to predict drought stress across the landscape remains limited. This uncertainty stems in part from an incomplete understanding of within-species variation in hydraulic physiology, particularly coordinated variation across multiple traits. This variation reflects genetic differentiation among populations (ecotypic variation) and phenotypic plasticity.