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Climate change and an 'overlooked' nutrient: Silica
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170323125519.htm"We found many negative effects where you take away snow; you freeze the soils, and it damages the trees," says Templer. But she never thought about looking at silica until Maguire approached her, asking if she had any samples remaining from Hubbard Brook. Because silica has no gaseous state, it remains intact in stored samples. "So we went into our archives and we got out some roots, and then he processed them for the silica," says Templer.
Maguire examined the roots of sugar maples, which are sensitive to freezing because they grow relatively close to the surface. He specifically tested the fine roots, those thin, stringy tendrils that absorb water and nutrients from the soil. His first surprising finding: the fine roots of a sugar maple tree make up only about 4 percent of the tree's biomass, but contain a whopping 29 percent of the silica. And when damaged by freezing, the amount of silica in the fine roots dropped by an astounding 28 percent.
This can be bad for individual trees, where silica plays several important roles, such as giving structure to leaves, protecting against harmful fungi, and -- Maguire suspects -- toughening tiny roots so they can push through rocky New England soil. But the downstream ecological consequences may be even more profound. If this percentage holds true for all the maple trees in an average forest, Maguire calculated, then freezing the roots could reduce silica uptake by a significant amount, about 31 percent of the silica regularly pumped out of temperate forests into rivers, lakes, and streams.
Maguire examined the roots of sugar maples, which are sensitive to freezing because they grow relatively close to the surface. He specifically tested the fine roots, those thin, stringy tendrils that absorb water and nutrients from the soil. His first surprising finding: the fine roots of a sugar maple tree make up only about 4 percent of the tree's biomass, but contain a whopping 29 percent of the silica. And when damaged by freezing, the amount of silica in the fine roots dropped by an astounding 28 percent.
This can be bad for individual trees, where silica plays several important roles, such as giving structure to leaves, protecting against harmful fungi, and -- Maguire suspects -- toughening tiny roots so they can push through rocky New England soil. But the downstream ecological consequences may be even more profound. If this percentage holds true for all the maple trees in an average forest, Maguire calculated, then freezing the roots could reduce silica uptake by a significant amount, about 31 percent of the silica regularly pumped out of temperate forests into rivers, lakes, and streams.
