Using plants as sensors: Rethinking how we monitor water stress

Professor Huade Guan from Flinders University explored the movement of water, energy, and carbon through the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum and uncovered how drought and water stress can disrupt these critical natural processes.

We discovered how monitoring plant hydraulics can provide unprecedented insights into root zone water availability, seasonal and interannual water storage changes, and ecosystem response to environmental stress. We saw how these principles can be scaled from individual trees to entire catchments, and how coupling plant water use with canopy energy exchange opens the door to new remote sensing applications.

We touched on how satellite-derived land surface temperature can be used to predict catchment low flows, offering powerful new opportunities for water resource management, drought monitoring, and environmental forecasting.