Drought Induced Fine Root Growth and Canopy Green-up of Tropical Dry Zone Vegetations in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Fine roots in forest soils have important implications for global carbon (C) balance, but processesunderlying this C sink are not well understood. This study evaluates year round dynamics of fine roots ina tropical dry mixed evergreen forest and an arboretum in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. Monthly soil coresamples (up to 25 cm depth) were collected randomly to cover a whole annual cycle of the two sites. Thesoils were air dried, sieved (< 2 mm), and fine roots (≤ 2 mm) were separated by handpicking coupledwith a water floating technique. Then, fine root biomass and C density were calculated using oven dryweight. Annual mean fine root biomass of the dry zone forest and the arboretum were found to be 5.72 ±0.57 t/ha and 7.88 ± 0.81 t/ha, respectively, with C densities of 2.69 ± 0.27 t/ha and 3.7 ± 0.38 t/ha,respectively. Thus, dry zone arboretum showed a higher growth and biomass, and hence a C pool of fineroots, than the dry zone forest, possibly due to a younger forest stand with fast fine root turnover rate. Inboth sites during the dry spell, there was an increased production of fine roots and a simultaneous leafflush on the canopy with a green-up. The increased fine root growth during the dry season generallyallows the trees to absorb more water under water-stressed situations. These events may be due to anundisclosed survival mechanism of such ecosystems under drought, which needs further studies.Key words: Drought, Fine root growth and canopy green-up, Tropical dry zone vegetation