Assessing Plant Vascular Function Through Optical Approaches

Across an exceedingly large range of environmental variation, vascular plants must replace water lost from leaves during photosynthesis, and supply sugars to growing organs. Plants accomplish this by maintaining xylem and phloem transport in coordination with stomata using a complex array of anatomical properties, cell processes, and by coordinating vascular traits in leaves, stems and roots. These vascular traits vary across biomes due to differences in evolutionary lineages and in response to a wide variety of abiotic and biotic factors. The maintenance of water and sugar transport provides a mechanistic link between plant physiological function and ecology which influences the evolution of life's diversity, and the responses of ecosystems to climate change.

This conference will focus on how new optical techniques — ranging from satellite sensors that monitor fluxes from whole ecosystems to 3D reconstructions of micro-scale leaf anatomy — can elucidate both physiological function and responses to environmental variation in plant vascular systems. Leaders and emerging scientists in the field of plant vascular biology will come together to present new advances, synthesize multi-scale collaborations, and suggest new research directions. Speakers will present the results of original research with a focus on the interdisciplinary implications of their work. Topics will cover sub-cellular to ecosystem scales, spanning mechanistic to ecological and evolutionary perspectives.