Improving Inferences from Hydrological Isotope Techniques

Abstract

Plant water isotopic compositions are widely used to describe patterns of soils water uptake. Although valuable, the technique only provides relative uptake distributions, which can be misleading. Without information on total transpiration, the technique cannot address central questions on drought response, competition, and species coexistence.

Keywords: deep water uptake; drought; hydrological isotope techniques; hydrological isotope tracer; plant competition; species complementarity; water uptake.