Vulnerability to drought of forests on the southern edge of the Amazon
hydraulic failure, drought, cavitation
At the same time that water is the most abundant molecul on the planet, it is also the most limiting factor for the survival of plants workwide. Water transportation by plants is considered the backbone of plant physiology and plant hydraulics has increasingly been applied to models for predicting the vulnerability of ecosystems around the worl. Aiming the knowledge advance on the vulnerability to drought of tropical forests, this study proposes to assess the vulnerability to drought of forests in the Amazon-Cerrado transition. Therefore, the thesis is divided in two chapters. In the first one, the vulnerability to drought is evaluated in two contexts, in a precipitation gradient and in different edaphic conditions. In this way, answers to the following questions are pursued: 1) does vulnerability to drought vary according to the rainfall regime in the Amazon-Cerrado transition? (2) whether trees that occur on fertile soils are more vulnerable to drought than trees that occur on less fertile soik, and (3) whether trees that occur on less fertile soils have greater regulation of leaf water potential throughout the day. In the second chapter, a study is conducted to help understand the effects of water stress on restored forests, seeking to answer the following questions: 1) Does the vulnerability to drought of restored vegetation differ according to the stage of vegetation succession? 2) Are tree species introduced at an early stage of succession, i.e., are young specimens more susceptible to water stress?