Mojito, Anyone? An Exploration of Low-Tech Plant Water Extraction Methods for Isotopic Analysis Using Locally-Sourced Materials
The stable isotope composition of water (δ18O and δ2H) is an increasingly utilized tool to distinguish between different pools of water along the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum (SPAC) and thus provides information on how plants use water. Clear bottlenecks for the ubiquitous application of isotopic analysis across the SPAC are the relatively high-energy and specialized materials required to extract water from plant materials. Could simple and cost-effective do-it-yourself “MacGyver” methods be sufficient for extracting plant water for isotopic analysis? This study develops a suite of novel techniques for plant water extraction and compares them to a standard research-grade water extraction method. Our results show that low-tech methods using locally-sourced materials can indeed extract plant water consistently and comparably to what is done with other state-of-the-art methods. Further, our findings show that other factors play a larger role than water extraction methods in achieving the desired accuracy and precision of stable isotope composition: (1) appropriate transport, (2) fast sample processing and (3) efficient workflows. These results are methodologically promising for the rapid expansion of isotopic investigations, especially for citizen science and/or school projects or in remote areas, where improved SPAC understanding could help manage water resources to fulfill agricultural and other competing water needs.
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AUTHORS (8)
CATEGORIES
- Solid Earth Sciences
- Climate Science
- Evolutionary Impacts of Climate Change
- Atmospheric Sciences not elsewhere classified
- Exploration Geochemistry
- Inorganic Geochemistry
- Isotope Geochemistry
- Organic Geochemistry
- Geochemistry not elsewhere classified
- Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology
- Ore Deposit Petrology
- Palaeontology (incl. Palynology)
- Structural Geology
- Tectonics
- Volcanology
- Geology not elsewhere classified
- Seismology and Seismic Exploration
- Glaciology
- Hydrogeology
- Natural Hazards
- Quaternary Environments
- Earth Sciences not elsewhere classified