Authors: Benton N Taylor Katilyn V Beidler Allan E Strand Seth G Pritchard
Publish Date: 2013/10/12
Volume: 374, Issue: 1-2, Pages: 941-948
Abstract
Accurate data on the standing crop production and turnover of fine roots is essential to our understanding of major terrestrial ecological processes Minirhizotrons offer a unique opportunity to study the dynamic processes of root systems but are susceptible to several measurement biasesNonlinear regression analysis resulted in an estimated depth of field of 078 mm for minirhizotron images Unadjusted minirhizotron data underestimated root net primary production and fine root standing crop by 61 when compared to adjusted data using our depth of field and root diameter corrections Changes in depth of field accounted for 99 of standing crop adjustments with root diameter corrections accounting for 1 Our results represent the first effort to empirically derive depth of field for minirhizotron images This work may explain the commonly reported underestimation of fine roots using minirhizotrons and stands to improve the ability of researchers to accurately scale minirhizotron data to large soil volumesThe NC and SC experimental sites used in this work were maintained from the Office of Science BER US Department of Energy Grant No DEFG0295ER62083 and Mead Westvaco respectively Funding for this research came from the National Science Foundation award number DEFC0206ER64156
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