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Sap flow measurement

What is sap flow?

Sap flow is the movement of water in roots, stems and branches of plants. Typically measured in sapwood xylem, or the water-conducting tissue of the plant, sap flow provides information on water status and water use of plants.

In the field of ecophysiology, sap flow is important in understanding plant transpiration and drought responses. In agriculture, it is important in the measurement of plant water use for irrigation decisions.

How to measure sap flow in plants?

Sap flow is measured by inserting sensors into the xylem tissue of the plant. The sensors are then used to trace known amount of applied heat. In some plants, sensors are attached to either the stem or the trunk. A robust mathematical approach to trace this heat is using heat ratio method.

SFM1C Installed with Dendrometer in Orchard

How the heat ratio method works

The heat ratio method (Burgess, Adams, Turner, Beverly, Ong, Khan and Bleby, 2001) is based on the temperature ratio created between probes positioned symmetrically above and below a line heater. A pulse of heat is provided by a heater needle located in the sapwood area, with a downstream and upstream needle that are accurately spaced to measure the heat difference over time. This measurement, combined with data on the sapwood area allows for the calculation of the sap flow.

In both SFM1 and SFM1x, there are two temperature probes and the central heater probe. A controlled heat pulse is emitted from the central heater probe, which the temperature probes measure as the heat is transported by the sap moving up or down the xylem. The sensors subsequently measure the sap flow velocity, with calculations performed within the SFM1x to derive the plant water use.

2024

Amini Fasakhodi, M., Djuma, H., Sofokleous, I., Eliades, M., & Bruggeman, A. (2024). Modeling water balance components of conifer species using the Noah-MP model in an eastern Mediterranean ecosystem. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2024-107
Augustaitis, A., & Pivoras, A. (2024). Sap Flow Density of the Prevailing Tree Species in a Hemiboreal Forest under Contrasting Meteorological and Growing Conditions. Forests, 15(7), 1158. https://doi.org/10.3390/f15071158
Berkelhammer, M., Page, G. F., Zurek, F., Still, C., Carbone, M. S., Talavera, W., Hildebrand, L., Byron, J., Inthabandith, K., Kucinski, A., Carter, M., Foss, K., Brown, W., Carroll, R. W. H., Simonpietri, A., Worsham, M., Breckheimer, I., Ryken, A., Maxwell, R., … Williams, K. H. (2024). Canopy structure modulates the sensitivity of subalpine forest stands to interannual snowpack and precipitation variability. EGUsphere, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-3063
Brighenti, S., Tagliavini, M., Comiti, F., Aguzzoni, A., Giuliani, N., Ben Abdelkader, A., Penna, D., & Zanotelli, D. (2024). Drip irrigation frequency leads to plasticity in root water uptake by apple trees. Agricultural Water Management, 298, 108870. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2024.108870
Chen, Y., Evers, J. B., Yang, M., Wang, X., Zhang, Z., Sun, S., Zhang, Y., Wang, S., Ji, F., Xiang, D., Li, J., Ji, C., & Zhang, L. (2024). Cotton crop transpiration reveals opportunities to reduce yield loss when applying defoliants for efficient mechanical harvesting. Field Crops Research, 309, 109304. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2024.109304
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Gao, S., Woodgate, W., Ma, X., & Doody, T. M. (2024). Prediction of Open Woodland Transpiration Incorporating Sun-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence and Vegetation Structure. Remote Sensing, 16(1), 143. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16010143
Hayat, F., Silwal, A., Seeger, S., Fichtner, T., Rimmele, S., & Maier, M. (2024). Understanding the plant water status of different forest tree species under drought (Nos. EGU24-12595). Copernicus Meetings. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-12595
Jardine, K., Gallo, L., Roth, M., Upadhyaya, S., Northen, T., Kosina, S., Tcherkez, G., Eudes, A., Domigues, T., Greule, M., & Keppler, F. (2024). The ‘Photosynthetic C1 pathway’ links carbon assimilation and growth in plants. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4116025/v1
Kokkotos, E., Zotos, A., & Patakas, A. (2024). The Ecophysiological Response of Olive Trees under Different Fruit Loads. Life, 14(1), 128. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.3390/life14010128
Kokkotos, E., Zotos, A., Triantafyllidis, V., & Patakas, A. (2024). Impact of Fruit Load on the Replenishment Dynamics of Internal Water Reserves in Olive Trees. Agronomy, 14(5), 1026. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy14051026
Luo, S., Tetzlaff, D., Smith, A., & Soulsby, C. (2024). Long-term drought effects on landscape water storage and recovery under contrasting landuses. Journal of Hydrology, 636, 131339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.131339
Michaud, J. M., Mocko, K., & Schenk, H. J. (2024). Positive pressure in bamboo is generated in stems and rhizomes, not in roots. AoB PLANTS, plae040. https://doi.org/10.1093/aobpla/plae040
Perron, N. S. (2024). Variability in tree-water relations from tree-line to tree-line in Canada’s western boreal forest. https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xmlui/handle/1866/32943
Ring, A.-M., Tetzlaff, D., Dubbert, M., Freymueller, J., & Soulsby, C. (2024). Assessing the impact of drought on water cycling in urban trees via in-situ isotopic monitoring of plant xylem water. Journal of Hydrology, 633, 131020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.131020
Sohel, Md. S. I., Herbohn, J. L., Zhao, Y., & McDonnell, J. J. (2024). Sap flux and stable isotopes of water show contrasting tree water uptake strategies in two co-occurring tropical rainforest tree species. Ecohydrology, 16(8), e2589. https://doi.org/10.1002/eco.2589
Sun, X., & Li, J. (2024). Patterns of water use by the Australian native Melaleuca styphelioides in urban environments and comparison of transpiration prediction by three different micrometeorological models. Trees, 38(2), 493–506. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-024-02496-8
Sun, X., Li, J., Liu, X., Wu, S., & Gao, Y. (2024). Mechanistic analysis of urban tree-soil interactions: Species-specific water use and desiccation effects on expansive clays. Plant and Soil. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-024-07032-8
Wang, X., Hu, Y., Ji, C., Chen, Y., Sun, S., Zhang, Z., Zhang, Y., Wang, S., Yang, M., Ji, F., Guo, Y., Li, J., & Zhang, L. (2024). Yields, growth and water use under chemical topping in relations to row configuration and plant density in drip-irrigated cotton. Journal of Cotton Research, 7(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42397-024-00173-2
2023
Benyahia, F., Bastos Campos, F., Ben Abdelkader, A., Basile, B., Tagliavini, M., Andreotti, C., & Zanotelli, D. (2023). Assessing Grapevine Water Status by Integrating Vine Transpiration, Leaf Gas Exchanges, Chlorophyll Fluorescence and Sap Flow Measurements. Agronomy, 13(2), 464. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13020464
Berkelhammer, M., Still, C., Page, G., Hildebrand, L., Byron, J., Foss, K., Zurek, F., Talavera, W., Brown, W., Inthabandith, K., Kucinski, A., & Carter, M. (2023). Sapflow and xylem water isotopes from Snodgrass Mountain, East River Watershed, Colorado USA. Environmental System Science Data Infrastructure for a Virtual Ecosystem (ESS-DIVE) (United States); Space and time dynamics of transpiration in the East River watershed: biotic and abiotic controls. https://doi.org/10.15485/1647654
Buyinza, J., Muthuri, C. W., Denton, M. D., & Nuberg, I. K. (2023). Impact of tree pruning on water use in tree-coffee systems on smallholder farms in Eastern Uganda. Agroforestry Systems, 97(5), 953–964. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-023-00842-2
Doody, T. M., Gao, S., Vervoort, W., Pritchard, J., Davies, M., Nolan, M., & Nagler, P. L. (2023). A river basin spatial model to quantitively advance understanding of riverine tree response dynamics to water availability and hydrological management. Journal of Environmental Management, 332, 117393. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.117393
El Hajj, M. M., Johansen, K., Almashharawi, S. K., & McCabe, M. F. (2023). Water uptake rates over olive orchards using Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar data. Agricultural Water Management, 288, 108462. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2023.108462
Helm, J., Muhr, J., Hilman, B., Kahmen, A., Schulze, E.-D., Trumbore, S., Herrera-Ramírez, D., & Hartmann, H. (2023). Carbon dynamics in long-term starving poplar trees—the importance of older carbohydrates and a shift to lipids during survival. Tree Physiology, tpad135. https://doi.org/10.1093/treephys/tpad135
Hillabrand, R. M., Dyck, M., & Landhäusser, S. M. (2023). Increases in sap flow and storage can compensate for successively greater losses of conducting area in large trees. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 333, 109395. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109395
Hnatiuc, M., Ghita, S., Alpetri, D., Ranca, A., Artem, V., Dina, I., Cosma, M., & Mohammed, M. A. (2023). Intelligent grapevine disease detection using IoT sensor network. Bioengineering, 10(9). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering10091021
Hultine, K. R., Hernández-Hernández, T., Williams, D. G., Albeke, S. E., Tran, N., Puente, R., & Larios, E. (2023). Global change impacts on cacti (Cactaceae): current threats, challenges and conservation solutions. Annals of Botany, 132(4), 671–683. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcad040
Liu, Y., Nadezhdina, N., Hu, W., Clothier, B., Duan, J., Li, X., & Xi, B. (2023). Evaporation-driven internal hydraulic redistribution alleviates root drought stress: Mechanisms and modeling. Plant Physiology, 193(2), 1058–1072. https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiad364
Perron, N., Baltzer, J. L., & Sonnentag, O. (2023). Spatial and temporal variation in forest transpiration across a forested boreal peat landscape. Hydrological Processes, n/a(n/a), e14815. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.14815
Shi, W., Li, J., Zhan, H., Yu, L., Wang, C., & Wang, S. (2023). Relation between Water Storage and Photoassimilate Accumulation of Neosinocalamus affinis with Phenology. Forests, 14(3), 531. https://doi.org/10.3390/f14030531
Stevenson, J. L., Birkel, C., Comte, J.-C., Tetzlaff, D., Marx, C., Neill, A., Maneta, M., Boll, J., & Soulsby, C. (2023). Quantifying heterogeneity in ecohydrological partitioning in urban green spaces through the integration of empirical and modelling approaches. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 195(4), 468. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-11055-6
Suardiwerianto, Y., Kurnianto, S., Hidayat, M. F., Simamora, N., Harahap, M. I. F., Fitriyah, N. A., Jabbar, A., Ghimire, C. P., & Deshmukh, C. S. (2023). Transpiration of Acacia plantations in a managed tropical peatland Sumatra, Indonesia (Nos. EGU23-14383). Copernicus Meetings. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-14383
Sun, X., Li, J., Cameron, D., Zhou, A., Bayetto, P., & Moore, G. (2023). Assessment of the influence of an Australian native eucalypt, Corymbia maculata, on soil desiccation in a temperate climate. Acta Geotechnica. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-023-02075-0
Wang, X., Ji, C., Chen, Y., Sun, S., Zhang, Z., Zhang, Y., Wang, S., Yang, M., Ji, F., Guo, Y., & Zhang, L. (2023). Optimizing population managements for machine-harvested and drip-irrigated cotton. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3429602/v1
Xenakis, G. (2023). Electric Circuit Theory as a method for monitoring tree water deficit at different scales. https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/5666/
2022
Asiimwe, G., Jaafar, H., Haidar, M., & Mourad, R. (2022). Soil Moisture or ET-Based Smart Irrigation Scheduling: A Comparison for Sweet Corn with Sap Flow Measurements. Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, 148(6), 04022017.
Campos, F. B., Montagnani, L., Benyahai, F., Callesen, T. O., Gonzales, C. V., Tagliavini, M., & Zanotelli, D. (2022). Disentangling the main sources of evapotranspiration in a vineyard. EGU General Assembly 2022. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-8231
Edwards, E. J., Betts, A., Clingeleffer, P. R., & Walker, R. R. (2022). Rootstock-conferred traits affect the water use efficiency of fruit production in Shiraz. Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research, 28(2), 316–327. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajgw.12553
El Hajj, M. M., Almashharawi, S. K., Johansen, K., Elfarkh, J., & McCabe, M. F. (2022). Exploring the use of synthetic aperture radar data for irrigation management in super high-density olive orchards. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 112, 102878. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2022.102878
Jardine, K. J., Cobello, L. O., Teixeira, L. M., East, M.-M. S., Levine, S., Gimenez, B. O., Robles, E., Spanner, G., Koven, C., Xu, C., Warren, J. M., Higuchi, N., McDowell, N., Pastorello, G., & Chambers, J. Q. (2022). Stem respiration and growth in a central Amazon rainforest. Trees. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-022-02265-5
Lakmali, S., Benyon, R. G., Sheridan, G. J., & Lane, P. N. J. (2022). Change in fire frequency drives a shift in species composition in native Eucalyptus regnans forests: Implications for overstorey forest structure and transpiration. Ecohydrology, 15(3), e2412. https://doi.org/10.1002/eco.2412
Landgraf, J., Tetzlaff, D., Dubbert, M., Dubbert, D., Smith, A., & Soulsby, C. (2022). Xylem water in riparian Willow trees (Salix alba) reveals shallow sources of root water uptake by in situ monitoring of stable water isotopes. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., 26, 2073–2092. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2021-456
Luo, Y., & Pacheco-Labrador, J. (2022). Evergreen broadleaf greenness and its relationship with leaf flushing, aging, and water fluxes. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 323(109060). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2022.109060.
Meng, L., Chambers, J., Koven, C., Pastollero, G., Gimenez, B., Jardine, K., Tang, Y., McDowell, N., Negron-Juarez, R., Longo, M., Araujo, A., Tomasella, J., Fontes, C., Mohan, M., & Higuchi, N. (2022). Soil moisture thresholds explain a shift from light-limited to water-limited sap velocity in the Central Amazon during the 2015–16 El Niño drought. Environmental Research Letters, 17.
Montague, M. S., Landhäusser, S. M., McNickle, G. G., & Jacobs, D. F. (2022). Preferential allocation of carbohydrate reserves belowground supports disturbance-based management of American chestnut (Castanea dentata). Forest Ecology and Management, 509, 120078. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2022.120078
Peixoto Neto, A. M. L., Cartwright, I., Silva, M. R. F., McHugh, I., Dresel, P. E., Teodosio, B., Jovanovic, D., McCaskill, M. R., Webb, J., & Daly, E. (2022). Linking evapotranspiration seasonal cycles to the water balance of headwater catchments with contrasting land uses. Hydrological Processes, 36(12), e14784. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.14784
Schoppach, R., Chun, K. P., & Klaus, J. (2022). Accounting for Dbh and Twi in Prediction of Stand-Scale Sap-Flux Density Reduces the Deviation from Measurement (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. 4129815). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4129815
Siddiqi, S. A., & Al-Mulla, Y. (2022). Wireless Sensor Network System for Precision Irrigation using Soil and Plant Based Near-Real Time Monitoring Sensors. Procedia Computer Science, 203, 407–412. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2022.07.053
Smith-Marin, C. M., Muscarella, R., Ankori-Karlinsky, R., Delzon, S., Farrar, S. L., Salva-Sauri, M., Thompson, J., Zimmerman, J. K., & Uriarte, M. (2022). Hydraulic traits are not robust predictors of tree species stem growth during a severe drought in a wet tropical forest. Functional Ecology, n/a(n/a). https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.14235
Sun, X., Li, J., Cameron, D., & Moore, G. (2022). On the Use of Sap Flow Measurements to Assess the Water Requirements of Three Australian Native Tree Species. Agronomy, 12(1), 52. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12010052
Thom, J. K., Fletcher, T. D., Livesley, S. J., Grey, V., & Szota, C. (2022). Supporting Growth and Transpiration of Newly Planted Street Trees With Passive Irrigation Systems. Water Resources Research, 58(1), e2020WR029526. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020WR029526
Yang, J., He, Z., Lin, P., Du, J., Tian, Q., Feng, J., Liu, Y., Guo, L., Wang, G., Yan, J., & Zhao, W. (2022). Variability in Minimal-Damage Sap Flow Observations and Whole-Tree Transpiration Estimates in a Coniferous Forest. Water, 14(16), 2551. https://doi.org/10.3390/w14162551