Plants can adapt to extreme shifts in water availability,
such as drought and flooding, but their ability to withstand these extreme
patterns will be tested by future climate change, according to a study by U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and their cooperators.
The study was published this week in Nature by a team of
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists led by Guillermo Ponce Campos
and Susan Moran and an Australian team led by Alfredo Huete from the University
of Technology, Sydney (UTS). This research included contributions from nine
other ARS scientists, four U.S. Forest Service scientists, and colleagues from
the University of Arizona, the University of California-Irvine, and UTS. ARS is
USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency, and this research supports
the USDA priority of responding to climate change.