| 摘要 | 第1-7页 |
| ABSTRACT | 第7-12页 |
| Chapter One Introduction and Literature Review | 第12-32页 |
| ·Plants and water | 第12-13页 |
| ·The importance of water in living cells | 第13页 |
| ·Soil-plant-atmosphere continuum | 第13-14页 |
| ·Sap flow | 第14-15页 |
| ·The Cohesion tension theory | 第15-16页 |
| ·Cavitation and embolism in plants | 第16-19页 |
| ·Mechanisms for water stress-induced embolism | 第16-18页 |
| ·Techniques to measure cavitation and embolism in trees | 第18-19页 |
| ·Vulnerability curves and the “air-seeding”hypothesis | 第19-22页 |
| ·The concept of vulnerability curve | 第19-20页 |
| ·Methods to obtain “vulnerability curve” | 第20-21页 |
| ·“Air-seeding”hypothesis | 第21-22页 |
| ·Wood anatomy, xylem structure and vulnerability to embolism | 第22-25页 |
| ·Vessel-length distributions and measurement | 第25-28页 |
| ·Centrifuge technique and Cavitron theory | 第28-31页 |
| ·Centrifuge technique | 第28-29页 |
| ·Cochard cavitron construction (used in our study) | 第29-31页 |
| ·Objective | 第31-32页 |
| Chapter Two The Impact of Vessel Size on Vulnerability Curves: Data and Models for Within-Species Variability in Saplings of Aspen, Populus tremuloides Michx | 第32-58页 |
| ·Abstract | 第32页 |
| ·Introduction | 第32-36页 |
| ·Materials and methods | 第36-40页 |
| ·Plant material | 第36页 |
| ·Cochard cavitron | 第36页 |
| ·VC measurements in the Cochard cavitron | 第36-37页 |
| ·Measurement of NPLC and PLC on stem segments ≤2 cm long | 第37-38页 |
| ·Visualization of embolized vessels using stain | 第38-39页 |
| ·VC in each vessel-diameter size-class | 第39-40页 |
| ·Results | 第40-49页 |
| ·Fitting Weibull PDFs to normalized frequency histograms of vessel size. | 第41-43页 |
| ·Weibull PDFs of embolized versus conducting vessels | 第43-45页 |
| ·Vulnerability curves for vessels of different diameter size-class and Weibull CDF fits | 第45-46页 |
| ·Dependence of P50 and Weibull CDF constants on vessel diameter size-class | 第46-49页 |
| ·Discussion | 第49-57页 |
| ·Vessel-diameter PDFs and vulnerability curves. | 第49-51页 |
| ·Pathway redundancy, pit area fraction and VCs | 第51-53页 |
| ·Pressure profiles in a cavitron, vessel length, and the pit area hypothesis | 第53-57页 |
| ·Acknowledgements | 第57-58页 |
| Chapter Three A Computational Algorithm Addressing How Vessel Length Might Depend on Vessel Diameter | 第58-69页 |
| ·Abstract | 第58页 |
| ·Introduction | 第58-59页 |
| ·Methods | 第59-62页 |
| ·Silicone rubber injection | 第59-60页 |
| ·Vessel diameter measurements | 第60-61页 |
| ·Computational algorithm for vessel length | 第61-62页 |
| ·Replication and statistical methods | 第62页 |
| ·Results | 第62-66页 |
| ·Discussion | 第66-68页 |
| ·Acknowledgements | 第68-69页 |
| Chapter Four What Happens When Stems are Embolized in a Centrifuge? Testing the Cavitron Theory | 第69-89页 |
| ·Abstract | 第69-70页 |
| ·Introduction | 第70-73页 |
| ·Materials and methods | 第73-78页 |
| ·Plant material | 第73-74页 |
| ·Cochard cavitron | 第74-75页 |
| ·VC measurements in the Cochard cavitron | 第75页 |
| ·Measurement of NPLC and PLC on stem segments ≤2 cm long | 第75-76页 |
| ·Visualization of embolized vessels using stain | 第76页 |
| ·Vessel length and diameter measurements | 第76-77页 |
| ·Scaling up 2 cm segment values to 27.4 cm segment values (theoretical computations) | 第77-78页 |
| ·Hydraulic weight of vessel diameter class-sizes | 第78页 |
| ·Statistics | 第78页 |
| ·Results | 第78-86页 |
| ·The pattern of PLC vs position in cavitron-embolized stem segments | 第78-80页 |
| ·Scaling up Kh and PLC from short segments in LPFM to long segments in cavitron | 第80-81页 |
| ·Visualization of embolized and conducting vessels | 第81-83页 |
| ·Vessel length and hydraulic weight of vessels | 第83-86页 |
| ·Discussion | 第86-88页 |
| ·Acknowledgements | 第88-89页 |
| Chapter Five Conclusions and Future Work | 第89-92页 |
| ·Conclusions | 第89-90页 |
| ·Future work | 第90-92页 |
| Reference | 第92-99页 |
| Acknowledgements | 第99-100页 |
| Resume of the author | 第100-102页 |
