Do plants make rain?

[Michaelangelica]

Do plants make rain?

If so do they do it deliberately and intelligently?

A popular science book (Dr Karl) here, talks about about the different rainfall patterns on either side of the rabbit-proof fence in WA.

One side is wheat farm the other scrubby bush. There is more rainfall on the scrubby bush side

 

I thought I read somewhere that plants exude chemicals that float up into the clouds and help "seed" rainfall.

I am sure I have read that plant chemicals help produce rainfall in the Amazon.

In fact, I am sure I read that scientists could tell were the rain formed by analysing the chemicals in the fallen rain.

I can't find that article now

 

 

 

I did come across this

As already mentioned, nuclei are essential for the condensation of water from the air, either in form of dew or of rain, but it is no0t yet clear how a nucleus is to be understood and how it works. Aitken invented a simple apparatus by means of which the nuclei present in the air could be counted, and which showed that their number is not increased by blowing coal, coke, or ordinary dust into the air.

 

Sometimes a difference is made between solid dust particles and hygroscopic substances in the air, but one cannot see why, e.g., a calcium chloride particle suspended in more or less humid air should be more hygroscopic than a carbon particle under the same circumstances. One would rather attribute a different effect of a nucleus and an ordinary particle to a different electric potential. However, this will not be further discussed at present.

from the same article

One process of making rain may be mentioned, because it is not well known, and is supposed to be effective, though it has not been studied scientifically. Some of the northern parts of Mexico consist of desert-like plains, partly overgrown with cacti.

Under certain conditions, which appear to be great heat, no wind, and a cloudless sky, the Indians set the cacti afire, thus creating a tremendous heat. After a very short time a downpour of rain sets in, which lasts for a few minutes only.

This is the description given to the author, and if true the explanation may be that the heat of the fire pushes wet layers of the air higher up, that they get cooled beneath the dew point and drop their water in the form of rain.

Wolf Klaphake: "Practical Methods for Condensation of Water from the Atmosphere" ~ Proc. Soc. of Chemical Industry of Victoria (Australia) 37: 1093-1103 (1936)

So the heat, or do the cacti have special nuclei ?

 

I can' get to this article

Access : More plants make more rain : Nature News

 

Airborne bugs make rain and snow

Airborne bugs make rain and snow (ABC News in Science)

 

So the heat, or do the cacti have special nuclei ?

[Turtle]

Do plants make rain?

 

Plants contribute both water vapor & particulates, but more is necessary to have rain. I recall just the other day hearing a meteorologist say that all rain starts as snow, but before parroting it here I went checking. :shrug: I found this most excellent & succint explanation, which speaks for itself. :D

 

source

" Does rain start off as snow or hail and then melt on the way down?"

 

It most cases, yes. This is a process known as the Bergeron-Findeisen process. In most area's of the earth the clouds grow high enough to reach area's where the temperature is below the freezing point of water. Bergeron said that such clouds would contain both water droplets and ice crystals, and because water does not instantly freeze at 0 deg.C in may exist in a supercooled state.

The ice crystals and supercooled water coexist in the cloud with the water either evaporating or joining with the ice crystal to make a larger crystal, the more this happens the faster and heavier the crystal grows and the faster it ascends the cloud, eventually becoming snowflakes.

The falling ice crystals that are now snowflakes will melt and become rain if they encounter an air temperature on their way down that is = or + 4 deg. C

 

But not all rain starts off as snowflakes. In the tropical regions the clouds do not get as high, and as such are free from ice, they are "warm clouds". The rain here is produced by Langmuir's Chain Reaction, or more commonly the collission and coalescence process.

The water droplets collide and coalesce due to atmospheric turbulence and convection.

 

Here's a biographical piece on Langmuir: >> Irving Langmuir: Biography from Answers.com

 

An article on the Bergeron process: >> Bergeron process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Michaelangelica]

Thanks turtle

It seems rain needs some sort of nucleus to form around, ice, dust ?, or 'something' exhuded from plants or trees(?)

Most of Oz (75%?) would be fairly tropical so I doubt if there would be ice clouds in those areas.

 

The CSIRO did (historically) a lot of work on cloud seeding

But it seems to have been discarded as dead end science these days

Cloud Seeding

 

It seems my dandruff may be making a contribution however!

Airborne dandruff can turn on rain

News in Science - Airborne dandruff can turn on rain - 01/04/2005

The researchers turned up a collection of human and animal skin particles, fur, fragments of plants, pollen, spores, bacteria, algae, fungi and viruses.

 

The particles ranged in size from tens of nanometres to several millimetres, and varied depending on the time of year. For instance, pollen was more common in spring, and in winter there was more decaying cellular matter.

 

As much as 80% of the particulate matter collected was biological in origin, ranging from 15% over the Swiss Alps to 80% from the Amazon and Lake Baikal in the autumn.

 

On average, 20 to 25% of the aerosol material they collected was biological.

 

I still suspect that plants may be deliberately producing rain.

If they can talk to other plants with chemical messages-why not?

 

Plant Essential Oils are very volatile and are usually found in Mediterranean or hotter climates.

Are they a part of the story? aromatic molecules would be nano sized.

 

There is frequently a symbiotic relationship between plants and soil 'wee beasties'

Ground-based Bacteria May Produce Rain

Ground-based Bacteria May Produce Rain - Science - InfoNIAC

 

and

if you think my speculations are weird, look at this article

Claim of alien cells in rain may fit historical accounts: study

Claim of alien cells in rain may fit historical accounts: study

[Moontanman]

if you think my speculations are weird, look at this article

Claim of alien cells in rain may fit historical accounts: study

Claim of alien cells in rain may fit historical accounts: study

 

This kind of dove tails with the idea that alien life forms or life forms different from regular earth life may not show up as life because we only look for DNA and if it isn't just like ours then it doesn't register. nanobes could be another type of life as well.

 

Nanobe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Nanobacterium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Yet another bit of weirdness from downunder :evil:

 

Microscopy-UK full menu of microscopy and microscopes on the web

[Michaelangelica]

. nanobes could be another type of life as well.

 

Nanobe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

# It is a living organism (contains DNA or some analogue, and reproduces).

O dear, I am just still trying to understand DNA and they do this to me. An analogue of DNA! I have only just (almost) sorted Mitochondrial DNA in my head.

 

I should have put this in strange claims??

 

Microscopy-UK full menu of microscopy and microscopes on the web

Nanobe Colony 35,000x

A colony!!

So they have a Sociology Department?!

 

Yet another bit of weirdness from downunder :)

Sure is; I'm gobsmaked.

 

This is a really difficult question I've asked.

 

Today, I was looking at whether bush fires here might cause rain.(weather?)

When Captain Cook first sailed up the East Coast of Australia, he commented on the number of bushfires he saw.

Aboriginal people used fire to farm/terra-form Australia. So much so, and for so long, that plants evolved to cope with the Aboriginal use of fire.

Many native seeds won't germinate even unless you blow smoke at them. You can even buy bottles of "Smokey Water" at plant nurseries to soak you native seeds in to make them germinate!

So I came across this article on bushfires and Eucalyptus.

http://www.bushfirecrc.com/search/downloads/3.00%20Bell%20small.pdf

On Volatile Organic Emissions ("VOCs") from Eucalyptus and Other fuels

and

yes these do make cloud condensation nuclei.

They further make the amazing statement that many of these VOCs are produced in the ROOTS of the plants.

So is there also a "Wee Beastie" involvement in the soil?

(The Eucalyptus oil in the leaves is highly toxic -protection?- and highly flammable -to make rain? cool the air?? and highly voatile-to make VOCs for rain?).

The "Blue Mountains" a rugged plateau West of Sydney looks blue becase of the amount of eucalyptus essential oil in the air.

So it/they changes light in some way?

 

 

This from another of my haunts The Permaculture Forums

Hi Jana,

It is an interesting idea. Eucalypts have one of the highest volatile

organic compound (VOC) emission rates of any plant species.

 

Trees can control clouds/rain through these VOC because they form cloud

condensation nuclei (CCN) that provide a starting point for all cloud

droplets (i.e. a surface for water to condense on).

 

We typically think of forests increasing CCN and thus more clouds/rain. But at some point a large number of CCN will actually decrease rain because you have many surfaces and not enough water- so the result is many small droplets that are too small to fall to the surface.

cheers,

Alex

Permaculture discussion forum • View topic - How can the Murray Darling System be saved for ever?

 

 

Back to Nanobes.

Then, also today another article on clouds

Cloud, fog and precipitation

and

The cloud classification system

I never realised there were so many types and at so many different heights.

So you would have to look at each different type of cloud and how it effects/affects weather. Are plants that smart?

 

So has anyone gone up in the stratosphere, sky, clouds, atmosphere, space to look for your nanobe babies?

 

This is all my brain can cope with for now.

[Michaelangelica]

I should put this in "Water where will it come from in 2050?" thread but as we we discussing this I thought you may be interested in this new, long-term research on cloud seeding.

 

Tasmanians manage to 'grow rain'

Tuesday, 03 February 2009

Monash University

 

The cloud seeding operation has resulted in more rainfall, according to new research.

 

A team of researchers at Monash University has released a new analysis of precipitation records from the long-term cloud seeding operation in Tasmania that shows a promising increase in rainfall during periods of seeding.

 

The team worked with Hydro Tasmania analysing the cloud seeding activity over the hydroelectric catchment area in central Tasmania for more than four decades - from 1960 to 2005.

 

Associate Professor Steven Siems, Faculty of Science said the analysis used monthly rainfall figures in the catchment area where the seeding took place and compared it with data from nearby control areas.

 

"A number of independent statistical tests showed a consistent increase of at least 5 per cent in monthly rainfall over the catchment area. This is the first time that an independent analysis of cloud seeding data over several decades has shown a statistically significant increase in rainfall," Associate Professor Siems said.

Tasmanians manage to 'grow rain'(ScienceAlert)

[Michaelangelica]

Lightning starts new bushfires in Grampians

The Bureau of Meteorology says thunderstorms moving across Victoria have produced lightning which has sparked new bushfires in the Grampians.

Forecaster Phil King says unfortunately the storms are not producing much rain.

 

"The top fall I can see at the moment is 4 mm at Pound Creek in South Gippsland. Generally one one or two millimetres of rain," he said

. . .

The fires in Gippsland were so intense yesterday that they formed their own thunderstorms, with microbursts of intense winds.

Lightning starts new bushfires in Grampians - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

[Michaelangelica]

This seems to be a 'pump theory' based on the physics of moving air pressure rather than nucleii

It seems to imply that coastal forests are most important in Australia.

These are the ones we mainly chop down as we like to live near the sea.

Revolutionary new theory overturns modern meteorology with claim that forests move rain

Revolutionary new theory overturns modern meteorology with claim that forests move rain

Jeremy Hance

mongabay.com

April 01, 2009

 

Largely ignored by scientific community, new theory could change how future generations view forests

 

Two Russian scientists, Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva of the St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics, have published a revolutionary theory that turns modern meteorology on its head, positing that forests—and their capacity for condensation—are actually the main driver of winds rather than temperature. While this model has widespread implications for numerous sciences, none of them are larger than the importance of conserving forests, which are shown to be crucial to 'pumping' precipitation from one place to another. The theory explains, among other mysteries, why deforestation around coastal regions tends to lead to drying in the interior.

. . .

“Forests maintain high evaporation which gets the cycle going,” Sheil told Mongabay.com, ”this can explain how deep wet continental interiors gain high rainfall”.

 

To explain the 'pump' theory in detail, Mongabay.com turned to Makarieva and Gorshkov:

 

“In any pump (e.g., water pump that pumps water into the swimming pool or your breathing pump [lungs] that pumps air into your body) a drop of fluid pressure is created, so that the fluid streams towards the area with lowered pressure.

In the case of biotic pump of atmospheric moisture this drop of air pressure is created by water vapor condensation.

That is, pressure of air around us is proportional to the number of gas molecules in a given volume.

Condensation of water vapor leads to the disappearance of vapor molecules and results in air pressure drop.”

The drop in air pressure is particularly important since it is one of the clear cut observations that “has been routinely overlooked” by conventional meteorologists, according to Murdiyarso and Sheil's paper.

. . .

“An actively evaporating natural rainforest will work as a pump continuously supporting lower air pressure above its canopy and thus drawing moist air from the [the ocean]” says Makarieva and Gorshkov. If the rainforest is cutoff or destroyed, water will simply stop being pumped from the ocean and will cease inland, leading to desertification.

. . .

And then comes the statement that has meteorologists rolling in their graves: “this indicates that water vapor condensation is not only a previously unaccounted, but the major, compared to temperature gradients, driver of atmospheric circulation on Earth.”

. . .

For a specific example Makarieva and Gorshkov point to prehistoric Australia. They believe the pump “explains the enigmatic conversion of Australian forests to deserts that roughly coincides in timing with the appearance of the first people.”

According to Makarieva and Gorshkov, when these early peoples burned small bands of forests along the coast where they first inhabited, “the internal inland forests were cut off from the ocean (the tube of the pump cut off) and underwent rapid desertification.”

 

Simply put a loss of coastal forests—which had been driving rain from the ocean into the interior—caused Australia's current dry climate. If Australia hadn't lost those coastal forests, its environment may be entirely different today—and would not be suffering from extreme and persistent droughts.

. . .

the implications for global warming are many, including re-evaluation of past ecosystem responses to changes in climate. However on the practical end, the new theory grants a new role for the importance of forests. While they have long been recognized as 'carbon sinks' they would now need to be recognized as the 'bringers of rain'—vital for maintaining a stable and productive climate for every species on earth.

. . .

Sheil, who is helping to bring the theory to light says, “I am convinced [the pump theory] deserves very careful scrutiny and not the general dismissal that has happened thus far.

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g94/troufs/pan01-0885a-1.jpg

 

Water and Mineral Transport

 

How do Trees Really lift Water to their Leaves? - Naked Scientists Discussion Forum

 

Solar Water Still and Pump

 

i just read this but can't find the article now !!

“Negative pressure” helps synthetic trees to drag water to new heights

Purchase the full-text article

 

References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.

 

Justin Mullins

 

Available online 13 September 2008.

 

Chemists have for the first time succeeded in reproducing the mechanism that trees use to draw water from their roots to their leaves

[maikeru]

As I understand it, plants have a major impact on helping to create rain, as your articles show Michaelangelica. Microbes, bits of organic matter like waste, dust, or debris, viruses, etc. all can be blown up into the air acting as condensation nuclei for water vapour. These are microbes living in, on, and around (or under in the soil) plants. If the plants die, the microbes usually die back and disappear too. And of course plants do move water around places like pumps, from subsoils or deep in the ground to the surface or higher, through the processes of transpiration and evaporation. They are critical for this, as this article on plant roots shows:

 

Root - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Just look at how deep, how expansive, how complete some of those root systems are. Trees, shrubs and bushes, and certain deep-rooted plants act as "bridges" or "conduits" between many different layers and worlds, moving water, minerals, and elements between them. Also, in plant biomass water is stored and conserved, when it might otherwise evaporate quickly, be lost through fast drainage or flooding, etc. All of these tendencies directly and indirectly, IMO, create positive feedback loops for the production of rain and other precipitation.

 

More stuff on microbe contributions to rain making:

 

Breakthrough Research On Ocean Algae Could Lead To Freeze- And Drought-Resistant Crops

Evidence Of 'Rain-making' Bacteria Discovered In Atmosphere And Snow

Potential Sources Of 'Rain-Making' Bacteria In The Atmosphere Identified

Pseudomonas syringae - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Michaelangelica]

New Super Detergent brings its own water!

'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English);

New Scientist Jan 2009 p 11 says researchers have found detergents in clouds.

Bacteria, amazing little critters, secrete surfactants, we think to transport nutrients though membranes. research has shown that they also break down the water surface tension of water better than any substance in nature.

"Noziere . . .. .speculates (that the bacteria) evolved the ability to summon water from the sky to help them survive."

'Curiouser and curiouser!'

" 'The next step will be to work out how these substances get up into the clouds', says Andri Andreae of the Max Planck Institute of Chemistry in Mainz Germany"

Yes and won't that be an interesting story:-

Look up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, it's a baby bacteria having a bubble-bath!"

 

I am reminded of the millions? billions? of frogs killed by the surfactant in Monsanto's Roundup (glyphosate). Still the company refuses to state what their new surfactant is. It is not an 'active ingredient' and by law they don't need to reveal their "trade secret" they say.

 

I am reminded also that many plants produce soap like subsatnces called 'saponens'

 

It seems surfactants may play a much greter role in world ecology that anyone ever dreamed possible.

 

that pic of detergent was a tiny thumnail. Anyway of reducing its size?

[Michaelangelica]

you may have noticed this is my Reading the last 12 months of New Scientist month

This article, this month, has astounding implications, especially for Australia.

Unfortunately I left the article on the train. Fortunately most of it is on the web

Rainforests may pump winds worldwide - environment - 01 April 2009 - New Scientist

 

As I understand it the premise is that coastal forests cause rain.

The rain falls thus decreasing air pressure; this sucks in moist sea air further inland, where forests make more rain; this causes a drop in air pressure resulting in further inward movement of moist air. And this process just gets repeated and repeated. The magazine had a neat little graphic explaining it all much better than words.

This is how some Russian Scientist believe coastal forests suck precipitation (rain) further and further inland.

In Australia the forests we are chopping down are the coastal ones.

The inland is getting dryer.

Australia is like a huge wagon wheel with 'the mud on the edge' the major centres of population. We like to live on the coast, build hot cities made of concrete- spread out-a car oriented society- like LA.

 

It may be that aboriginal burning of coastal forests over 40-60,000 years (pick a number) may have dried out the continent.

The theory suggests that past civilisations could have had a much greater impact on global climate than we thought. Australia once had forests but is now largely desert. Gorshkov and Makarieva argue that Aborigines burning coastal forests may have switched the continent from wet to dry by shutting down its biotic pump.

 

The implications of this theory/model are far reaching

 

• Oz Outback farmers can blame the city dwellers for their drought?
  
• We may need to green our cities post haste
  
• get those indoor plants going?
  
• should we be clearing coastalland to build a sea of concrete roofs, now, with new planning laws, no room to grow a tree-no "backyards."
  
• should we be wood-chipping coastal forests for the Japanese to make origami?
  
• how does this affect the Great Barrier reef and its aquifers?
  
• should we be moving city development inland (more Canberras ! Horror!)
  

Of course the implications may be similar in other countries.

However the implications may also be GLOBAL

The implications are global, he adds. "We think some of the recycled Amazon moisture is taken on a jet stream to South Africa, and more maybe to the American Midwest. Gorshkov and Makarieva are looking at the front end of an absolutely critical process for the world's climate."

If their theory is correct, it means that large forests help kick-start the global water cycle.

 

Climatologists are already worried about the state of the Amazon rainforest. Last month, the UK's Met Office warned that if the planet warms by 4 degrees, 85 per cent of the forest could dry out and die.

If Gorshkov and Makarieva are right, the Amazon will be gone before warming kicks in.

They predict that even modest deforestation could shut down the pump and reduce rainfall in central Amazonia by 95 per cent.The same could happen in the world's other large rainforest regions, such as central Africa.

 

It's not all bad news. If natural forests can create rain, then planting forests can, too. Sheil says, if forests attract rain, then replanting deforested coastal regions could re-establish a biotic pump and bring back the rains. "Once forests are established, the pump would be powerful enough to water them. Could we one day afforest the world's deserts? Makarieva and Gorshkov's hypothesis suggests we might."

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227024.400-rainforests-may-pump-winds-worldwide.html?full=true

[Michaelangelica]

Not sure if I approve of this:confused:

An award for someone who makes PLASTIC TREES!:eek2:

 

Naturally Inspired

By Kenny Berkowitz '81

 

 

Abe Stroock examines his “synthetic tree,” which mimics transpiration in plants.

University Photo

Searching for inspiration on a walk through Northern California’s Redwood National Park, Abraham Stroock stopped to look around him. But it wasn’t the physical beauty of the giant sequoias that left him transfixed; it was the beauty of the physics that allows these trees to transport water hundreds of feet in the air, pushing against gravity for a thousand years without expending any biological energy. And though Stroock continues to find his inspiration in nature, the thing that currently excites him is a small piece of polymer no bigger than a stick of gum.

 

“I’m not a naturalist, so the wonder of life doesn’t come as easily to me as the physical reality of it,” says Stroock, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, as he slides his latest “synthetic tree” out of its plastic sandwich bag. “I wouldn’t have pursued this for the last five years, trying to get this to work, if there wasn’t good evidence that plants do this. If we hadn’t studied the physiology of plants, we wouldn’t have had the courage to launch into this project.”

 

With three days left of spring classes, as the trees on the quad come into full bloom, Stroock holds his synthetic tree up to the window, catching the sunlight in its two small circles etched side by side. After numerous attempts to build porous structures that could replicate the capillary action that gets sap to the highest twig—all unsuccessful—Stroock and his graduate student, Tobias Wheeler, abandoned conventional wisdom and devised a new concept: Instead of thinking of the leaf material that pulls the water to the top of the trees as porous material, like filter paper, they imagined it might be more like a gel, which can hold water at the molecular scale. That would explain why a leaf can remain water-filled even in extremely dry conditions. The polymeric tree in his hand, capable of wicking microscopic amounts of water at very great tension through its photo-lithographed channels, is the result of that breakthrough.

 

It’s been a long road, but with their work recently published in Nature, Stroock and Wheeler know they are on to something. “We flailed around for two or three years, unsure of what path to take,” says Wheeler, Stroock’s first graduate student, who completed his doctorate in May 2008. “No one had ever tried to tackle this problem before, and for a while it felt like we weren’t making any progress, which was tough. But once we switched from capillaries to this polymeric material, we had the first inklings this approach could in fact work. Things started to fall in place, and we wound up reaching the goal we’d set for ourselves five years earlier.”

 

If Stroock and Wheeler are right, the implications are enormous. The fundamental challenge—to engineer nanoscaled materials that reproduce the processes of living cells—is even more difficult than it sounds, and these trees represent the first synthetic system to mimic transpiration in plants, pumping water with enough power to reach the top of a giant sequoia.

 

 

In one of its narrowest applications, a collaboration with Alan Lakso of the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, this technology could be used to measure water pressure inside grapevines and apple trees, providing a continuous stream of data that would allow growers to quickly adjust irrigation.

 

“To have a collaboration like this between a plant scientist and a chemical engineer is very unusual,” says Lakso, professor of pomology and viticulture, who sought out Stroock after reading a newspaper article about the synthetic tree. “It’s been great to brainstorm with an engineer who is fascinated by plants, because the physics of plants tends to be extremely complex, which makes them very hard to describe and even harder to model as they change over time.”

 

In its widest applications, this same technology could provide the foundations for a large-scale passive system for heat transfer, a microfluidic lab-on-a-chip, or an electrode for low temperature fuel cells.

 

“The synthetic tree is a real tour de force, but it’s just one of the things that makes Abe so extraordinary,” says Paulette Clancy, William C. Hooey Director of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “It’s this sense of innovation, this incredible boldness he brings to everything he does. He’ll jump into a field that is already heavily populated, which is awfully difficult to do, and make a real impact. He brings a very thorough approach and a deep physical understanding to reach some very creative solutions—which is rare.”

 

In the five years since coming to Cornell, Stroock has published 16 papers covering a wide range of projects in microfluidics, which he’s balanced with a teaching load of both undergraduate and graduate courses, winning a College of Engineering Excellence in Teaching Award in 2006.

 

“With Abe, we have somebody trained as a physicist, who teaches chemical engineering courses so well that he wins awards for teaching,” says Clancy. “He took a standard course in heat and mass transfer, which is typically about the effects that come into play when you scale up to a large industrial process, and turned that on its head, asking ‘What happens when you scale it down to microscopic length? What additional factors do you need to take into account?’ That’s the kind of innovative approach that really benefits our students. Even now, during his tenure year, when most academics would be concerned with themselves, he’s been taking time to lobby for daycare facilities on campus, and I think that kind of selflessness speaks volumes about who he is as a person.”

 

Stroock started exploring the world as child, growing up outside Boulder, Colo., as the son of a mathematician and an early childhood educator. (His father, Daniel, is an MIT professor best known for his work in diffusion processes; his mother, Lucy, is currently on the adjunct faculty of the Urban College of Boston.) When he was a teenager, the family moved to Cambridge, Mass., where his father began teaching at MIT and Stroock began his undergraduate career. Two years later, he transferred to Cornell, where he graduated *** laude in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in physics.

 

Unsure of what to do next, Stroock moved to France, where he had lived as a high school exchange student with the family of Laure Mougeot, who has since become his wife. After receiving a master’s degree in solid state physics from the University of Paris—and getting married—Stroock returned to Cambridge, completing his Ph.D. in chemical physics from Harvard in 2002 while Laure began writing case studies for the Harvard Business School. Then, after his Ph.D. and a brief post-doc with Harvard’s George Whitesides, who Clancy calls “the world’s preeminent expert on microfluidics,” Stroock returned to Cornell as an assistant professor, where he met the newly arrived Wheeler.

 

 

 

The microscope image (above) shows water-filled, spherical voids within the hydrogel that plays the key role in the leaf and root of the synthetic tree. These water capsules serve as miniature laboratories for studying the properties of water at large negative pressures (down to -220 atmospheres).

Tobias Wheeler

“The first summer I worked with him, he came to the lab almost every day,” says Wheeler. “That says a lot about his approach, which has always felt very collaborative, very cooperative. My first impression was that he looked very young, and when we initially began meeting people to talk about the synthetic tree, they thought he was a graduate student and I was his undergraduate assistant. We were amused, but it’s easy to see how people might have thought that, because he’s so enthusiastic and open to new ideas. And that energy carried through my Ph.D., recharging me whenever we encountered a barrier in our research.”

 

 

In a second, equally ambitious microfluidics project, Stroock is collaborating with researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College to develop a biodegradable bandage to transport fluid to and from a wound; and in a third, he’s collaborating with Professor Lawrence Bonassar to engineer scaffolded, tissue-like, functional materials that could be used to either foster the growth of healthy cells for transplantation or restrict the growth of tumors.

 

 

“At its core, we want to make a device that can mimic the way the body delivers nutrients to its tissues,” says Bonassar, associate professor of biomedical engineering with a joint appointment in mechanical engineering. “Tissues contain within themselves a network of channels—blood vessels—through which they get nutrients. What we did was to take this basic architectural feature of the body and superimpose it on a hydrogel, which is mostly water and polysaccharide, to make a better tool for culturing cells. It’s a material that has a long history in medicine, but we’re using it in an entirely new application.

 

“Abe has this wonderful combination of precision, creativity, and relentlessness,” continues Bonassar. “We both knew very quickly that we had something special, and when you have lightning in a bottle, there’s a temptation to share it as quickly as possible. But Abe was always very focused on the task at hand. He was the one who kept saying, ‘We just need one more experiment to nail this down.’ And as one turned into two, then ten, he kept going until he was 100 percent certain of what we had. In many ways, Abe is the kind of person I came to Cornell to work with: someone who would challenge me, send me in new directions, and do things no one had ever done before.”

 

Taken together, the projects have earned Stroock a National Science Foundation Career Award, a 3M non-tenured faculty grant, an Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation Young Investigator grant, participation in the Frontiers of Engineering Symposium at the National Academy of Engineering, and membership in Technology Review’s 2007 list of 35 top innovators under 35 years old. And for all their differences, the three projects share a common root in plant science, biomimicry, and fluid mechanics.

Cornell Engineering : Naturally Inspired

I have quoted much of the article as it seems more of a press release.

More here

Synthetic tree: A means to remove CO2 from the air

Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 18:00

This news item was posted in Science category and has 1 Comment so far.

 

 

In 2003, a Dr. Klaus Lackner, a Columbia University physicist, had designed a synthetic tree that could draw carbon dioxide from air and retain the carbon. It was the first step in application of carbon sequestration technology.

 

 

However, Dr. Lackner’s synthetic tree did not look like a tree or perform any of the functions of a real tree. The synthetic tree was merely an air capture device to remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it.

 

Now, in September 2008, Abraham Stroock and Tobias Wheeler, of Cornell university, have created a synthetic tree that simulates the process of transpiration by which trees draw water to its branches and leaves.

 

What are synthetic trees?

A synthetic tree is a palm-sized microfluidic system that mimics the main features of transpiration. In synthetic trees, evaporation or transduction of water in the vapour phase into negative pressures in the liquid phase, takes place followed by stabilization and flow of liquid water at very high negative pressures.

A real tree can transfer water to great heights, up to 85 meters tall, from the roots to its leaves, through its trunk. The synthetic trees, created by Stroock and Tobias Wheeler, can transfer liquids in a similar way to amazing heights.

 

The synthetic tree comprises two networks of parallel channels placed next to each other in a thin sheet of hydrogel - a material used to make contact lenses - connected to a main channel, thus replicating a tree’s vascular system.

 

In an synthetic tree, the tranparent sheet of hydrogel is 1 millimeter thick. There are 80 parallel channels etched into the hydrogel sheet. These parallel sheets are connected to a main channel that enters into a network of microchannels in the leaf or root network. The channels, in a synthetic tree are approximately 100 micrometers wide.

 

How do synthetic trees work?

Real trees use xylem, a tubular tissue-like substance, to pull water out of the ground and pass it to the leaves.

 

Because of negative pressure, the water remains in a metastable state, something between a liquid and vapor.

 

For their synthetic tree, Stroock and Wheeler decided to use hydrogel, or polyhydroxyethyl methacrylate, to replicate the plant membrane. Hydrogel is a porous solid with the mixture of the solid and liquid phase at the molecular level. This makes the pores very tiny - much less than the maximum allowable 10 nanometers to hold the water - so that the negative pressure is high enough to suck the water. If the pores are larger than 10 nanometers, then the pores will fail to hold on to the liquid.

 

Synthetic trees to remove CO2 from air, carbon extraction and synthetic tree technology for environment and air cleaning | DWS Tech

 

ISTM that the most interesting thing about this is the low energy pumping of water.

Part of the problem with water scarcity is getting it to where it is needed (Demonstarted last week in Oz wher 1/2metre of rain fell on the coast (in one day!) and the inland and Murry Darling & W. Victoria is still in drought)

[stereologist]

I've been to a lecture in which the presenter showed how plants can extract water from passing clouds. The plants collect the mist on their surfaces and the water drips off next to the plant. Last I heard their were efforts to promote moisture in the soil by placing fences in the area to extract water from the passing clouds where plants no longer existed.

[Turtle]

I've been to a lecture in which the presenter showed how plants can extract water from passing clouds. The plants collect the mist on their surfaces and the water drips off next to the plant. Last I heard their were efforts to promote moisture in the soil by placing fences in the area to extract water from the passing clouds where plants no longer existed.

 

Interesting! Do you recall where that is going on? :doh: I recently heard this bit on collecting water from fog with nets. :doh: What won't we silly human bags of water think of next. :D

 

Water collection WASH Technology

Fog harvesting: a solution for Cape Verde’s water shortages?

January 29, 2009

... Residents here have little access to safe drinking water due to a shortage of purification facilities and declining rainfall, a situation shared by 25 percent of the population – more than 100,000 people.

 

Close to the sea, the government-protected park on Santiago Island has ample fog, which does not often produce rain.

 

With the help of 200sqm of netting erected in 2005, Serra Malagueta’s residents are collecting fog water to supply their water needs. The nets capture fog, which then turns into water that drips into a trough and flows through pipes. The filtered water is fed into holding tanks that supply the water to the elementary school and community faucets. ...

[stereologist]

The lecture was by a guy named Vogel or Vogelmann. He was working with a group in Mexico to reestablish forests where they once stood. He had great photos of lone trees in mist with wet ground under the trees. Very simple and dramatic work. What they wanted to know was whether or not this water did anything other than wet the upper surface.

[Michaelangelica]

The lecture was by a guy named Vogel or Vogelmann. He was working with a group in Mexico to re-establish forests where they once stood. He had great photos of lone trees in mist with wet ground under the trees. Very simple and dramatic work. What they wanted to know was whether or not this water did anything other than wet the upper surface.

Thanks stereologist

I've done a bit of googling and come up with a few leads.

 

Tropical montane cloud mist forests are among the most biologically rich and diverse ecosystems, providing habitats for many of the world's endangered species.

More about how to make measurements.

Changes in Land Use and Water Use and Their Effects on Climate, Including Biogeochemical Cycles III Posters - Biogeosciences

 

What is a cloud forest?

 

Also known as the bosque mesófilo de montaña, the cloud forest constitutes one of the most beautiful natural settings in Mexico. This is a magical place, made up of evergreens, covered with brilliantly colored orchids, bromeliads, mosses and lichens. Here too, you will find dozens of beautiful and surprisingly large trees wrapped in the nearly constant mist, which evokes fascination and respect. The the expression cloud forest is not a scientific term, it is gerenerally used to describe a habitat or bioregion in ehich clouds and mist in the air determine the type of vegetation and conditions for growth. The Mexican cloud forest in Veracruz is often covered by mist, which in addition to rainfall, contributes to the hydrological cycle and influences climate and biodiversity.

 

Cloud Forest in Danger

 

While this eco-system possesses the greatest biodiversity of any found in Mexico, it is also one of the most threatened eco-systems in the world. We are in a distinct transition zone - where species from the northern and southern hemispheres live together harmoniously.

 

In México, the cloud forest has been reduced in large measure due to coffee cultivation, cattle grazing and increases in human population. Cloud forest deforestation has led to soil erosion, flooding, reduction in water flow, and plant and animal extinctions, which upset the ecological equilibrium of the ecosystem. This causes irreversible loss of natural, genetic resources. Increases in rural poverty are also a by-product of deforestation.

 

 

 

Why is it important to save cloud forests?

 

When cloud forests are cut down for cattle farming, the result is soil compaction. When the soil is compacted water infiltration is reduced and surface runoff increases. Erosion begins as well in upper watersheds. Flood danger increases for lower watersheds, putting communities at high risk. It is critical to protect cloud forests from becoming cultivated land. These fragile ecosystems are critical to the water cycle in the watershed and beyond. The cloud forest eco-system is the most "skilled" system in terms of its ability to "milk the clouds" for their precious liquid. Other environmental services that are provided by the cloud forest include: the creation of a carbon sink, the essential preservation of biodiversity and unparalleled beauty.

cloud forest mexico adopt acre

i don't think we have these much in Australia as most mountain ranges are low by world comparisons.

 

How is it possible for tropical cloud forest plants to thrive out-of-doors in Coastal California? If one looks into the origins of familiar local garden plants like Fuchsia or Begonia one will find that many of the species we grow are native to higher elevations in the tropics, in these cases the Andean foothills. Section Vireya Rhododendron and Aeschynanthus (lipstick plants) come from the montane tropics of Southeast Asia, particularly New Guinea. These plants can grow here because of striking similarities between coastal California's climate and that of mountainous areas in the tropics.

Cloud Forests - Conservation Education

 

 

a bit tecnical, some seach terms may be useful. "Elfin " forests is nice:):(

Summary Diurnal courses of stomatal conductance, leaf water potential, and the components of tissue water potential were measured in six canopy species in an elfin cloud forest.

 

Water relations - Conductance - Water potential - Tropical trees - Turgor pressure

SpringerLink - Journal Article

 

It would be nice to know if the plants had any special structures for harvesting the moisture, as "bio-mimicry" is all the rage in Engineering Technology these days.:)

[carlton-temple]

There was a few days ago an article on the BBC (internet), or was it science daily? about minute bacteria living on certain plants which were swept up into clouds and provided nuclei about which "rain" could form. It seems that these small beasties with a long Latin name have the capacity to increase the clouds temperature from -40 to -6 so "de freezing" the cloud! Another oddity about this lad is that it draws food from leaves by forming an ice cristal on/in the leafs cells so puncturing the cells to obtain its nutrients. Sorry can't be more helpful as to source.