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Lysimeter - Wikipedia

A lysimeter is a device used to measure evapotranspiration from plants. It does this by measuring the amount of precipitation received in an area and the amount lost through the soil. This allows the amount of water lost through evapotranspiration to be calculated. Lysimeters come in two types, weighing and non-weighing. Weighing lysimeters involve growing vegetation in a large soil tank so rainfall input and water lost through the soil can be easily measured by changes in weight.

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143 views11 pages

Lysimeter - Wikipedia

A lysimeter is a device used to measure evapotranspiration from plants. It does this by measuring the amount of precipitation received in an area and the amount lost through the soil. This allows the amount of water lost through evapotranspiration to be calculated. Lysimeters come in two types, weighing and non-weighing. Weighing lysimeters involve growing vegetation in a large soil tank so rainfall input and water lost through the soil can be easily measured by changes in weight.

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Teslim Sulaiman
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Lysimeter

A lysimeter (from Greek λύσις (loosening)


and the suffix -meter) is a measuring
device which can be used to measure the
amount of actual evapotranspiration which
is released by plants (usually crops or
trees). By recording the amount of
precipitation that an area receives and the
amount lost through the soil, the amount
of water lost to evapotranspiration can be
calculated.[1] Lysimeters are of two types:
weighing and non-weighing.

Lysimeter station in Kittendorf,


Germany

General Usage

Schema of a lysimeter station

A lysimeter is most accurate when


vegetation is grown in a large soil tank
which allows the rainfall input and water
lost through the soil to be easily
calculated. The amount of water lost by
evapotranspiration can be worked out by
calculating the difference between the
weight before and after the precipitation
input.

For trees, lysimeters can be expensive and


are a poor representation of conditions
outside of a laboratory or orchard, as it
would be impossible to use a lysimeter to
calculate the water balance for a whole
forest. But for farm crops, a lysimeter can
represent field conditions well since the
device is installed and used outside the
laboratory. A weighing lysimeter, for
example, reveals the amount of water
crops use by constantly weighing a huge
block of soil in a field to detect losses of
soil moisture (as well as any gains from
precipitation).[2] An example of their use is
in the development of new xerophytic
apple tree cultivars in order to adapt to
changing climate patterns of reduced
rainfall in traditional apple growing
regions.[3]

View into the inspection chamber of a


lysimeter station

The University of Arizona's Biosphere 2


built the world's largest weighing
lysimeters using a mixture of thirty
220,000 and 333,000 lb-capacity column
load cells from Honeywell, Inc. as part of
its Landscape Evolution Observatory
project.[4]

Use in whole plant


physiological phenotyping
systems
To date, physiology-based, high-
throughput phenotyping systems (also
known as plant functional phenotyping
systems), which, used in combination with
soil–plant–atmosphere continuum (SPAC)
measurements and fitting models of plant
responses to continuous and fluctuating
environmental conditions, should be
further investigated in order to serve as a
phenotyping tool to better understand and
characterise plant stress response.[5] In
these systems (known also as gravimetric
system), plants are placed on weighing
lysimeters that measure changes in pot
weight at high frequency. This data is then
combined with measurements of
environmental parameters in the
greenhouse, including radiation, humidity
and temperature, as well as soil water
conditions. Using pre-measured data
including soil weight and initial plant
weight, a great deal of phenotypic data
can be extracted including data on
stomatal conductance, growth rates,
transpiration and soil water content and
plant dynamic behaviour such as the
critical ɵ point, which is the soil water
content at which plants start to respond to
stress by reducing their stomatal
conductance.[6]

The Faculty of Agriculture at the Hebrew


university of Jerusalem has the most
advanced functional phenotyping system
in the world, with more than 400 units
screened simultaneously.[7]

History
In 1875 Edward Lewis Sturtevant, a
botanist from Massachusetts, built the
first lysimeter in the United States.[8]

References
1. Davie, Tim (2003-01-01). Fundamentals of
Hydrology (https://books.google.com/boo
ks?id=XAGt03ANojgC) . Psychology
Press. ISBN 9780415220286.

2. Rana, G. and N. Katerji. 2000.


Measurement and estimation of actual
evapotranspiration in the field under
Mediterranean climate: a review. European
Journal of Agronomy 13:125-153.

3. "Red, juicy, heat resistant: the hunt for a


climate-proof apple" (https://www.ft.com/
content/196c65d5-60de-41c6-9b2d-1c615
148d341) . Financial Times. Retrieved
16 October 2023.

4. "Landscape Evolution Observatory |


Biosphere 2" (http://biosphere2.org/resear
ch/projects/landscape-evolution-observa
tory) . biosphere2.org. Retrieved
2015-12-02.

5. Negin, Boaz; Moshelion, Menachem


(2017). "The advantages of functional
phenotyping in pre-field screening for
drought-tolerant crops" (http://www.publis
h.csiro.au/fp/fp16156) . Functional Plant
Biology. 44 (1): 107–118.
doi:10.1071/FP16156 (https://doi.org/10.
1071%2FFP16156) . PMID 32480550 (htt
ps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3248055
0) . S2CID 89365918 (https://api.semantic
scholar.org/CorpusID:89365918) .

6. "Home" (http://www.plant-ditech.com/) .
plant-ditech.com.

7. "ICORE" (http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/
plantscience/icore.php) .

8. Lewis, Sturtevant E. (August 2009).


Sturtevant's Notes on Edible Plants (http
s://books.google.com/books?id=Rbbe0Xx
0DuoC) . BiblioBazaar. ISBN 978-1-113-
52736-3.

8. Reth S., Perez-Priego O., Coners H., Nolz


R. (2021) Chapter 58. "Lysimeter" in
Springer Handbook of Atmospheric
Measurements: 1613-1628 ID:
10.1007/978-3-030-52171-4 – 058
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