How Sonora's Plants Survive the Heat
Scientists unlock secrets of Sonoran plants thriving in extreme heat. Using pressure chambers, they measure water potential to understand how plants conserve moisture. This research could be key to mitigating climate change by predicting future ecosystem behavior in arid regions.
With the purpose of having a future application to effectively mitigate the effects of climate change, a team of researchers and students from the Earth Systems Ecophysiology Laboratory (LEET) of the Institute of Ecology (IE), UNAM, carries out work field with new species of plants distributed in the flora and fauna protection area in the Sierra de Álamos-Río Cuchujaqui, Sonora, an area where, in addition to plant species, animals such as the leopard or ocelot, puma and jaguar are preserved.
How do plants survive in semi-arid regions of Sonora where temperatures sometimes exceed 40 degrees Celsius? What basic mechanisms do these plant species develop to conserve and distribute the scarce humidity that reaches their structures? To find out, they carry out field campaigns in that Protected Natural Area of Sonora.
