Quantifying the buffer storage effects of a plant

Plant water storage (PWS), which protects plants from water stress during severe droughts, also regulates a number of aspects of the spatio-temporal dynamics of water transport in the soil-plant system. Overestimation or underestimation of transpiration is possible if we equate the amount of water that is absorbed by the roots to the total sap flux that is transpired to the atmosphere through the leaves. Experiments suggest that shoot/stem storage fluxes contribute to 2-15% of the total sap flux in trees. Most of the above ground storage fluxes contributing to the total sap flux in trees come from the middle segment of the plant stem. While experiments have been done to measure shoot storage contribution to sap flux, root storage contributions to sap flux still remains unknown. Experiments have also shown that root biomass contributes up to 40% of the total tree biomass which is significant, it
becomes important to quantify root storage fluxes in the trees. There are models available estimating water storage fluxes within the trees. Nevertheless, these models do not quantify the water storage fluxes and its contribution to the sap flux explicitly within the roots.