Continuous measurement of whole-tree water balance for studying urban tree transpiration

Street and garden trees in urban areas are often exposed to advection of strong vapour pressure deficit (VPD) air that can raise the whole-tree transpiration rate (ET), known as the oasis effect. However, urban trees tend to have small soil volume compared with natural conditions, and so they are believed to strongly regulate stomata. ET characteristics of such urban trees have not been well understood because of a lack of reliable measurement methods. Therefore, we propose a novel weighing lysimeter method and investigate the whole-tree water balance of an isolated container-grown Zelkova serrata to examine (a) which biotic and abiotic factors determine ET and (b) which spatial and temporal information is needed to predict ET under urban conditions. Whole-tree water balance and environmental conditions were measured from 2010 to 2012. Although leaf area substantially increased in the study period, daily ET did not vary much. ET increased with VPD almost linearly in 2010 but showed saturation in 2011 and 2012. Root water uptake lagged ET by 40 min in 2012. These results suggest that the small planter box interfered with root growth and that hydraulic supply capacities did not increase sufficiently to support leaf area increase. From analysis of water balance, we believe that neglecting soil drought effects on street trees without irrigation in Japan will overestimate ET over 4–5 sunny days at the longest. This is unlike previous studies of forest.