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Instruments > In Situ/Laboratory Instruments > Pressure/Height Meters > PRESSURE CHAMBERS

Preferred term

PRESSURE CHAMBERS  

Definition

  • In simplest terms, the pressure chamber can be thought of as measuring the "blood pressure" of a plant, except for plants it is water rather than blood, and the water is not pumped by a heart using pressure, but rather pulled with a suction force as water evaporates from the leaves. Water within the plant mainly moves through very small, interconnected cells, collectively called xylem, which are essentially a network of pipes carrying water from the roots to the leaves. The current model of how this works is that the water in the xylem is under tension, and as the soil dries, or for some other reason the roots become unable to keep pace with evaporation from the leaves, then the tension increases. Under these conditions you could say that the plant begins to experience "high blood pressure." Simply put, the pressure chamber is just a device for applying air pressure to a leaf (or small shoot), where most of the leaf is inside the chamber but a small part of the leaf stem (the petiole) is exposed to the outside of the chamber through a seal. The amount of pressure that it takes to cause water to appear at the petiole tells you how much tension the leaf is experiencing on its water: a high value of pressure means a high value of tension and a high degree of water stress. The units of pressure most commonly used are the Bar (1 Bar = 14.5 pounds per square inch) and the Mega Pascal (1 MPa = 10 bars). Because tension is measured, negative values are typically reported. An easy way to remember this is to think of water stress as a "deficit:" the more the stress, the more the plant is experiencing a deficit of water. The scientific name given to this deficit is the "water potential" of the plant. The actual physics of how the water moves from the leaf within the pressure chamber to the cut surface just outside the chamber is more complex than just "squeezing" water out of a leaf, or just bringing water back to where it was when the leaf was cut. In practice, however, the only important factor is for the operator to recognize when water just begins to appear at the cut end of the petiole. Additional information available at "http://fruitsandnuts.ucdavis.edu/crops/pressure-chamber.shtml" [Summary provided by the Fruit and Nut Research and Information Center.] (en)

Broader concept

Change note

  • 2021-08-05 16:43:41.0 [sritz] insert AltLabel (id: null category: primary text: PRESSURE CHAMBERS language code: en);

URI

https://gcmd.earthdata.nasa.gov/kms/concept/1c274ce0-6357-4a3a-8249-ba00a9b469ec

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