What represents a water source for the ecological restoration of a plant in an arid region is still up to debate. To address this issue, we conducted an in situ experiment in the Ulan Buh Desert of China, to study desert plants absorbing atmospheric water vapor. We selected Tamarisk, a common drought-salt-tolerant species in the desert, for ecological restoration as our research subject, used a newly designed lysimeter to monitor precipitation infiltration, and a sap flow system to track reverse sap flow that occurred in the shoot, branch, and stem during the precipitation event, and observed the precipitation redistribution process of the Tamarisk plot. The results showed that Tamarisk indeed directly absorbs precipitation water: when precipitation occurs, the main stem, lateral branch, and shoot all show the signs of reversed sap flow, and the reversed sap flow accounted for 21.5% of the annual sap flow in the shoot and branch, and 13.6% in the stem. The precipitation event in the desert was dominated by light precipitation events, which accounted for 81% of the annual precipitation events. It was found that light precipitation can be directly absorbed by the Tamarisk leaves, especially during nighttime or cloudy days. Even when the precipitation is absent, it was found that desert plants can still absorb water from the unsaturated atmospheric vapor; even the absorbed atmospheric water vapor was transported from the leaves to the stem, forming a reversed sap flow, as a reversed sap flow was observed when the atmospheric relative humidity reached 75%. This study indicated that the effect of light precipitation on desert plants was significant and should not be overlooked in terms of managing the ecological and hydrological systems in arid regions.
Keywords: Tamarisk; Ulan Buh Desert; arid area; atmospheric moisture; reverse sap flow.