The influence of vegetation activity on the Dole effect and its implications for changes in biospheric productivity in the mid-Holocene

Stomatal pore size and density in mangrove leaves and artificial leaves: effects on leaf water isotopic enrichment during transpiration

We tested the hypothesis that the previously observed low isotopic enrichment of mangrove leaf water is caused by larger stomatal pores and lower densities compared with freshwater plants. First, we measured and compared pore size and density in mangroves, transitional and freshwater species in South Florida. We pooled this data with other reports encompassing 14 mangrove species and 134 freshwater species and tested for differences in pore size and density between mangroves and freshwater plants. Second, we built artificial leaves having different pore size and density and determined whether there were isotopic differences in their water after transpiration. Both the local survey and pooled data showed that mangrove leaves have significantly larger stomatal pores with lower densities compared with freshwater plants. Isotope enrichment of water from artificial leaves having larger less dense pores was lower than those having smaller and denser pores. Stomatal pore size and density has an effect on leaf water isotopic enrichment amongst other factors. Pore size and density probably affects key components of the Peclet ratio such as the distance advective flow of water must travel to the evaporative surface and the cross-sectional area of advective flow. These components, in turn, affect leaf water isotopic enrichment. Results from the artificial leaf experiment also mimic a recent finding that effective path length scales to the inverse of transpiration in real leaves. The implications of these findings further our understanding of leaf water isotope ratios and are important in applications of stable isotopes in the study of paleoclimate and atmospheric processes.

Quantitative estimates of changes in marine and terrestrial primary productivity over the past 300 million years

Changes in marine primary production over geological time have influenced a network of global biogeochemical cycles with corresponding feedbacks on climate. However, these changes continue to remain largely unquantified because of uncertainties in calculating global estimates from sedimentary palaeoproductivity indicators. I therefore describe a new approach to the problem using a mass balance analysis of the stable isotopes (18O/16O) of oxygen with modelled O2 fluxes and isotopic exchanges by terrestrial vegetation for 300, 150, 100 and 50 million years before present, and the treatment of the Earth as a closed system, with respect to the cycling of O2. Calculated in this way, oceanic net primary productivity was low in the Carboniferous but high (up to four times that of modern oceans) during the Late Jurassic, mid-Cretaceous and early Eocene greenhouse eras with a greater requirement for key nutrients. Such a requirement would be compatible with accelerated rates of continental weathering under the greenhouse conditions of the Mesozoic and early Tertiary. These results indicate possible changes in the strength of a key component of the oceanic carbon (organic and carbonate) pump in the geological past, with a corresponding feedback on atmospheric CO2 and climate, and provide an improved framework for understanding the role of ocean biota in the evolution of the global biogeochemical cycles of C, N and P.