To kick start 2022 we will host our first scientific seminar on the thematic of scaling within the biogeosciences open to our friends, colleagues, collaborators and the wider biogeoscience community. These seminars and discussions aim to provide a friendly, safe and relaxed space for the biogeoscience community to present their current research and foster some lively discussions on the challenges and shared experiences of scaling process understanding within biogeoscience research.
On Monday 31st January at 14:00 CEST we are delighted to welcome Emeritus Professor Roderick Dewar to present some results from his latest research and share his perspective on using ‘top down’ approaches like optimisation and statistical mechanics, as opposed to more mainstream ‘bottom-up’ approaches to predict the behaviour and function of organisms/systems.
The title of his talk will be:
What is the cost of opening stomata?
Stomatal optimisation models, which have a long history, attempt to understand observed stomatal behaviour in terms of a trade-off between the benefits and costs of stomatal opening. All models agree on the benefits (increased CO2 supply) and on the general nature of the costs (increased water loss), but they disagree on the precise nature of the costs of increased water loss. In this talk I will discuss a recent optimisation model according to which stomata adjust so as to maximise the rate of leaf photosynthesis, under the assumption that water loss leads to non-stomatal limitations to photosynthesis, for which there is growing evidence. The model, which can be solved analytically, explains and synthesises observed stomatal responses to changes in both above- and below-ground environmental factors, and also to changes in internal sink strength.
Dewar RC, Hölttä T, Salmon Y. 2021. Exploring optimal stomatal control under alternative hypotheses for the regulation of plant sources and sinks. New Phytologist 233: 639-654 https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.17795
The talk will be presented in english and will be recorded.
So save the date, register for the seminar and look forward to seeing you all soon.
Please do not hesitate to forward to colleagues you think may also be interested in attending.
To register in advance for this meeting follow the link below:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAof-6qrD4sGteNwV-KVy5gkm7ojP_NcnTk
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the zoom meeting.
Look forward to catching up with everybody.
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