Graduate student Greg Goldsmith in the montaine cloud forest of Monteverde National Park, Costa Rica. Photo courtesy of Drew Fulton (Canopy in the Clouds).
Tropical montane cloud forest trees use more than their roots to take up water. They also drink water from clouds directly through their leaves, University of California, Berkeley, scientists have discovered. While this is an essential survival strategy in foggy but otherwise dry areas, the scientists say that the clouds the trees depend on are now disappearing due to climate change. "The study highlights the vulnerability of this rare and already endangered ecosystem to climate change," said Todd Dawson, senior author of the study and UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology. Changes in cloud cover have already been correlated to declines and disappearances of cloud forest animal populations, such as frogs and salamanders. The new study will be published next year in the journal Ecology Letters and is available online this month. In tropical montane cloud forests, leaves are constantly bathed in clouds, making them wet.
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