摘要
Water is a unique substance because there is no substitute for the support of life.With expanding demand of the world’s growing population and economy,combined with climate change,attempts are underway to reduce water use from both managed and natural ecosystems.Currently,plant–water relations are assessed by field experiments and extrapolated through remote sensing and modeling techniques.The overarching challenge,thus,is to understand the basic interactions between plants and their environment well enough to predict responses regionally and globally,both now and in the future.The authors of this special issue share their insights to help bridge these gaps,and thereby speed the integration of plant–water relations to make more reliable and soundly based predictions at multiple spatial scales.This special issue contains nine papers that use a combination of observations,models,and remote sensing to interpret the role that plants as individuals,communities and components of the landscape play in the hydrologic cycle.
