Presented by the Appalachian State University Office of University Advancement Partnerships
Join App State’s Dr. Howard S. Neufeld for an exciting look at how trees move water hundreds of feet up their trunks and how this may be affected by climate change.
The tallest trees in the world can grow to be more than 350 feet tall and include the redwoods on the west coast of North America and the giant Eucalypts of Australia. How in the world can water move upwards for hundreds of feet in the trunk of trees against the downward force of gravity? And why can a dead plant also move water upwards? That suggests you don’t need a living organism to move the water. But if that is true, then what is the physical process responsible for such a dramatic result?
Do trees push the water up? Alternatively, do they allow it rise by capillary action? Or do they move water as a gas through the trunk? Or maybe they pull it up! But if the latter, how could they “pull” liquid water. That implies the water must be under tension (negative pressure) and is that even physically possible?
In this talk, Dr. Neufeld will discuss how trees transport water to great heights, and how the interplay between wood structure and function makes all the difference in the world for this process. As you will see, this problem constitutes a scientific mystery whose solution has required the interdisciplinary collaborations of botanists, physicists, and mechanical engineers, and today is still very much a subject of study.
About the Speaker
Dr. Howard S. Neufeld is a Professor of Biology at App State and is known as the “Fall Color Guy” on Facebook. He received his B.S. in Forestry from Rutgers University, his M.F. in Forest Sciences from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science, and his Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Georgia. He was a post-doctoral researcher at New Mexico State University and a National Research Council associate at the EPA Lab in Corvallis, Oregon. He has served as president of The Association of Southeastern Biologists and the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society. He was the first chair of AppalAIR, the interdisciplinary atmospheric research group at App State, and the first director of the Southern Appalachian Environmental Research and Education Center. Neufeld’s research expertise is in the area of plant physiological ecology, and has included work in deserts, swamps and forests. His teaching duties include Introductory Biology, Plant Physiology, Air Pollution, and Biostatistics, as well as an Honors course on the Future of Human Civilization.