Do plants make rain?

[michaelhoffman]

Greenery can have a number of effects on a local climate. Plants are thought to transfer moisture from the soil into the air by evaporation from their leaves, and hold water in the soil close to the surface, where it can also evaporate. What is more, the darker surfaces of plants compared to sandy deserts also absorb more solar radiation, which, along with their rough texture, can create convection and turbulence in the atmosphere. This might create more or less rainfall.

 

 

 

 

dsi

[JMJones0424]

It is generally customary to provide a link to the source you are quoting, and to place the quote in quote tags. Otherwise, it looks like you meant to pass someone else's work off as your own. The full article, whose third paragraph was pinched verbatim by michaelhoffman, can be found here: Biology News: More plants make more rain

 

EDIT: I knew that paragraph seemed familiar, it is the same article posted by Michaelangelica. What was your point michaelhoffman?

[Michaelangelica]

What about blueary?

Mountain ranges are blue in US and Oz due to the plants secreting secondary metabolites.

Do they do this intelligently so as to give moisture in air a nucleus to form around; eventually producing rain?

[maikeru]

What about blueary?

Mountain ranges are blue in US and Oz due to the plants secreting secondary metabolites.

Do they do this intelligently so as to give moisture in air a nucleus to form around; eventually producing rain?

 

Er, perhaps depends on your definition of plant "intelligence." But I think it's a wonderful positive feedback loop. And it's a better way of producing rain than this one, which involves gigawatt lasers aimed at the sky:

 

Cloud-Creating Laser Could Trigger Rain On Demand - Lasers - Gizmodo

 

Sometimes I really wonder why people bother... Want more rain? Plant a tree.

[Michaelangelica]

Might work in Europe where you have moisture in the air but not outback Australia.

Some here believe that indigenous burning of the (firestick farming) landscape for 50,000-70,000 years changed the climate to a much drier one.

 

On plant intelligence,

Like my kids, plants continually surprise me. We now know they talk to other plants, warning like species of a threat. Plants are capable of trial and error learning. They are acutely aware of their environment both above and below ground.

Lately research has found that they are changing their metabolism and chemical structure in response to rising CO2 levels.

Plants seem aware of the plant communities they live in. Cooperative and symbiotic relationships exist with various local 'wee beasties' and some 'bigger beasties'.

We know that the various parts of a plant communicate chemically (like us) with other bits of the plant. Some exhibit a "personality' or individuality of response to stimuli.

Plants form new dendrites which may indicate memory.

They seem to be able to make choices.

The only difference between plants and animals in seems to be animals move, plants (mostly) do not. they don't need to, their food comes to them (sunlight mainly).

Unlike us few put all their neurons into one basket (brain) and operate as a gestalt.

While we respond instantly to stimuli, plants have a slower time frame.very little 'wild" plant behavior has been recorded.

"If you define intelligence as the capacity to solve problems, plants have a lot to teach us," says Mancuso, dressed in harmonizing shades of his favorite color: green. "Not only are they 'smart' in how they grow, adapt and thrive, they do it without neuroses. Intelligence isn't only about having a brain."

 

Plants have never been given their due in the order of things; they've usually been dismissed as mere vegetables.

Smarty Plants: Inside the World's Only Plant-Intelligence Lab

Hardly articulate, the tiny strangleweed, a pale parasitic plant, can sense the presence of friends, foes, and food, and make adroit decisions on how to approach them.

 

Mustard weed, a common plant with a six-week life cycle, can't find its way in the world if its root-tip statolith - a starchy "brain" that communicates with the rest of the plant - is cut off.

. . .

We now know there's an ability of self-recognition in plants, which is highly unusual and quite extraordinary that it's actually there," says Dr. Trewavas.

. . .

The new field of plant neurobiology holds its first conference - The First Symposium on Plant Neurobiology - in May in Florence, Italy.

New research opens a window on the minds of plants / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Plant neurobiology

http://ds9.botanik.uni-bonn.de/zellbio/AG-Baluska-Volkmann/plantneuro/

http://plantneurobiology.ibcas.ac.cn/links.html

http://www.plantbehavior.org/neuro.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2634579/

http://www.dowebsites.net/linv/5thspnb/

A critique of this view:-

http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/93/4/345

[Michaelangelica]

^ D. V. Spracklen, B. Bonn, K. S. Carslaw (2008). "Boreal forests, aerosols and the impacts on clouds and climate". Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A. 366 (1885): 4613–26. doi:10.1098/rsta.2008.0201. PMID 18826917. http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~eardvs/papers/spracklen08c.pdf.

 

Boreal forests and aerosols

Boreal forests modify atmospheric particles in several ways. Vegetation emits

biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) that can be oxidized in the

atmosphere to form products with low enough vapour pressure to condense on

existing aerosol particles, forming secondary organic aerosol (SOA).

 

This SOA is an important component of the particulate load in many environments (Zhang

et al. 2007) including the boreal forest.

 

The most important BVOCs emitted by boreal forests are monoterpenes (C10H16), with the strength of emission depending on the tree species and varying according to temperature and light among other variables.

Vegetation can also emit particles directly into the atmosphere.

Primary biological aerosol particles include spores, fungi and leaf matter.

Very little is known about the importance of these particles for atmospheric composition and climate.

They may dominate the large aerosol size mode over forested regions

and may be important ice nuclei impacting rain formation ( Diehl et al. 2001).

[Michaelangelica]

I just found this in Wiki, while looking up Terpenes

Terpenes are released by trees more actively during warmer weather, acting as a natural form of cloud seeding.

 

The clouds reflect sunlight, allowing the forest to regulate its temperature.

no ref. given

[maikeru]

Plants can remember the properties of light:

 

Scientists say plants can remember properties of light

 

btw, awesome info on terpenes Michaelangelica. Perhaps you are right about this "plant intelligence."

[Michaelangelica]

The fact that the microbes actively moved toward the DMSP indicates that the tiny organisms play a role in ocean sulphur and carbon cycles, which exert a powerful influence on Earth’s climate. How fast the microorganisms consume DMSP — rather than converting it into DMS — is important because DMS is involved in the formation of clouds in the atmosphere. This in turn affects the heat balance of the atmosphere.

 

Seymour, Stocker, Professor Rafel Simó of the Institute for Marine Sciences in Barcelona, and MIT graduate student Tanvir Ahmed carried out the research in the MIT laboratory of Stocker, who pioneered the use of microfluidics and video microscopy in the study of ocean microbes. The new study is the first to make a visual record of microbial behaviour in the presence of DMSP.

 

“It’s important to be able to directly look at an environment in order to understand its ecology,” Stocker said. “We can now visualize the behavior of marine microorganisms much like ecologists have done with macro-organisms for a long time.”

 

To do this, the team recreated a microcosm of the ocean environment using a microfluidic device about the size of a flash drive with minuscule channels engraved in a clear rubbery material. The scientists injected DMSP into the channel in a way that mimics the bursting of an algal cell after viral infection — a common event in the ocean — then, using a camera attached to a microscope, they recorded whether and how microbes swam towards the chemical.

 

The researchers found that some marine microbes, including bacteria, are attracted to DMSP because they feed on it, whereas others are drawn to the chemical because it signals the presence of prey. This challenges previous theories that this chemical might be a deterrent against predators.”

 

“Our observations clearly show that, for some plankton, DMSP acts as an attractant towards prey rather than a deterrent,” said Simó, an expert on the role of DMSP in the sulfur cycle.

 

“By simulating the microscale patches of the chemical cue and directly monitoring the swimming responses of the predators towards these patches, we get a much more accurate perception of these important ecological interactions than can be obtained from traditional bulk approaches.”

 

The research also indicates that marine microorganisms have at least one behavioral characteristic in common with larger sea and land animals: we’re all drawn to food.

 

Next steps: The team plans to extend the research from the laboratory to the ocean environment; the team is working on an experimental system that can be used on board oceanographic ships working with bacteria collected directly from the ocean.

 

Source: “Chemoattraction to Dimethylsulfoniopropionate Throughout the Marine Microbial Food Web,” by Justin R. Seymour, Rafel Simó, Tanvir Ahmed and Roman Stocker. Science, July 16, 2010.

 

Funding: This research was performed with funding from the Australian Research Council, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, La Cambra de Barcelona, the Hayashi Fund at MIT, and the National Science Foundation.

Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

 

Tiny microbes, global effect (Science Alert)

The planet is sounding more like Gaia every day

 

vegetation effects account for around 30% of annual rainfall variation in Africa's Sahel region. The results are reported in Geophysical Research Letters.

 

The finding suggests that rain encourages greenery, which in turn creates more rainfall; likewise an arid surface should tend to keep the atmosphere dry.

Biology News: More plants make more rain

[Eclipse Now]

Back to the chemical plants and corals use to make rain:

DMS makes rain!

Dimethyl sulfide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coral DMS under threat from global warming

 

“A disturbing aspect of our recent research at Heron Island coral cay, however, has shown that when corals are stressed by elevated temperatures, coral bleaching occurs and the corals shut down production of atmospheric DMS.

 

“Unfortunately, because of global warming and pollution, much of the Great Barrier Reef is already stressed. If a significant portion of the reef dies, this local feedback mechanism will no longer function, and there will be a decline in DMS production.”

 

Professor Jones said Southern Cross University research in the Antarctic had found that massive amounts of DMS is also emitted by algae each spring when the sea ice melts, again with important implications for cloud formation and climate over Antarctica.

 

He said research suggested that other forested and heavily vegetated areas of the globe might also produce a similar effect, in that it is likely that trees and plants themselves produce cloud-forming aerosol particles. But, as with the coral reefs, production of DMS can be shut down when the climate suffers stress.

 

DMS is so important it forms part of the Gaia hypothesis called the CLAW hypothesis. But with global deforestation there's also another negative feedback called the ANTI-CLAW hypothesis.

CLAW hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Cool name hey?

 

But for some good news: IF we build a rainforest, it can increase local rainfall by 30%! Please watch this TED talk, it is in my top 5 favourite TED talks EVER!

Willie Smits restores a rainforest | Video on TED.com

[Michaelangelica]

 

From Plants and Fungi to Clouds

The atmosphere is replete with aerosols made up of organic molecules, which are necessary for clouds to form, as well as for rain and other forms of precipitation to fall. However, how these organic aerosols form has largely remained a mystery to atmospheric scientists. Now, a new study published in Science this week (August 30) shows that salt compounds released by plants and fungi hover above the Amazon Rainforest, where the may exert a significant impact on the region’s weather by contributing to s aerosols to the atmosphere and serving as seeds for cloud and rain formation.

http://the-scientist.com/2012/08/31/from-plants-and-fungi-to-clouds/