Groundwater use of invasive alien plant, mesquite in Sudan

YASUDA Hiroshi

doi:10.7211/jjsrt.43.590

<p>Mesquite has been introduced to Sudan as a countermeasure for the desertification and it has worked for fixing sand dune drifting by high drought tolerance. On the other hand, it has turned to be an exclusive invasive species expelling native species because of high drought tolerance and becomes a target of the extermination. The high drought tolerance depends on water uptake by rapid extension of root to deeper aquifer. At the observation site, mesquites 2-3 m in height uptake groundwater from aquifer of the depth 23 m which is 10 times of the height. Survival strategy of mesquite is to germinate in the rainy season and extend roots to reach groundwater. A remarkable characteristic of water uptake by mesquite is the midday depression. Mesquites uptake groundwater during daytime and seize water uptake for 2-3 hours around the noon. Around noon, when solar radiation reaches its maximum and temperature increases, mesquites prevents consumption by controlling transpiration. It is also a characteristic to support the high drought tolerance. Numerical simulation of groundwater level fluctuation by uptake of mesquite was tried. In addition to the Fourier fitting, the artificial neural network was applied. A model was set up to the input of the solar radiation and temperature and the output of the groundwater level and groundwater level simulation was performed. The result was high correlation of the fit and the midday depression was well reconstructed.</p>

Groundwater use of invasive alien plant, mesquite in Sudan

Bibliographic Information

Search this article

Description

Journal

References(16)*help

Keywords

Details 詳細情報について

Export

Report a problem