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The effects of abiotic factors on plant health and biomechanics: a mesocosm study on potamogeton crispus

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conference contribution
posted on 2019-02-06, 11:15 authored by Davide Vettori, Stephen Rice
Interactions between flow and vegetation are widely investigated because vegetation is a primary factor controlling channel ecohydraulics, nearshore hydraulics and flood risk. Laboratory experiments are a critical tool in this research area and, to adequately represent the complexity of natural ecosystems, live plants, rather than artificial surrogates, are often used. In the present work, we expose a freshwater macrophyte (Potamogeton crispus) to a range of environmental conditions commonly found in ecohydraulic laboratories to investigate how these affect the level of plant health and associated variations in plant biomechanical properties. This is motivated by a need to understand how deterioration in live plants that are used in flume facilities affects their hydraulic performance and therefore the verisimilitude of the data they provide on flow interactions. Results show that short-medium term exposition to tap water or low irradiance levels is stressful for plants and can induce modifications in their biomechanics, with a potential effect on their hydrodynamic performance.

Funding

This work was funded by the HYDRALAB+ project, funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement number 654110.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

12th International Symposium on Ecohydraulics

Citation

VETTORI, D. and RICE, S.P., 2018. The effects of abiotic factors on plant health and biomechanics: a mesocosm study on potamogeton crispus. Presented at the 12th International Symposium on Ecohydraulics (ISE 2018), Toyko, Japan, 19-24 August 2018.

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-06-04

Publication date

2018

Notes

This is a conference extended abstract.

Publisher version

Language

  • en

Location

Toyko, Japan

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