Life form-specific variations in leaf water oxygen-18 enrichment in Amazonian vegetation

Leaf water ¹⁸O enrichment (Δo) influences the isotopic composition of both gas exchange and organic matter, with Δo values responding to changes in atmospheric parameters. In order to examine possible influences of plant parameters on Δo dynamics, we measured oxygen isotope ratios (δ¹⁸O) of leaf and stem water on plant species representing different life forms in Amazonia forest and pasture ecosystems. We conducted two field experiments: one in March (wet season) and another in September (dry season) 2004. In each experiment, leaf and stem samples were collected at 2-h intervals at night and hourly during the day for 50 h from eight species including upper-canopy forest trees, upper-canopy forest lianas, and lower-canopy forest trees, a C₄ pasture grass and a C₃ pasture shrub. Significant life form-related differences were detected in ¹⁸O leaf water values. Initial modeling efforts to explain these observations over-predicted nighttime Δo values by as much as 10[per thousand]. Across all species, errors associated with measured values of the δ¹⁸O of atmospheric water vapor (δv) appeared to be largely responsible for the over-predictions of nighttime Δo observations. We could not eliminate collection or storage of water vapor samples as a possible error and therefore developed an alternative, plant-based method for estimating the daily average δv value in the absence of direct (reliable) measurements. This approach differs from the common assumption that isotopic equilibrium exists between water vapor and precipitation water, by including transpiration-based contributions from local vegetation through ¹⁸O measurements of bulk leaf water. Inclusion of both modified δv and non-steady state features resulted in model predictions that more reliably predicted both the magnitude and temporal patterns observed in the data. The influence of life form-specific patterns of Δo was incorporated through changes in the effective path length, an important but little known parameter associated with the Péclet effect.