Plant Water Use Flashcards
What is evapotranspiration?
Evapotranspiration (ET) is a term used to describe the water consumed by plants over a period of time. Evapotranspiration is the water loss occurring from the processes of evaporation and transpiration. Evaporation occurs when water changes to vapor on either soil or plant surfaces. Transpiration refers to the water lost through the leaves of plants
About how much of the water absorbed by a plant is used in metabolic processes vs how much is transpired?
About 99.9% of all water absorbed by the plant will return to the atmosphere through transpiration. Only about 0.1% is actually used in metabolic processes. Thus the overall amount of ET for a crop or landscape over an entire growing season is about the same as the seasonal water requirement.
In plants with high growth rates would you expect high or low transpiration?
Since plants growing quickly would need more CO2 and they would need to open their stomates to acquire CO2, they would also have high transpiration rates, unless it had an storage mechanism for CO2 such as C4 or CAM plants which can breifly open thier stomates or open at optimal times such as night time to acquire and store CO2 as Malate.
