Speaker: Dr. ZiJian Wang (王子键博士)

Time: 10:00-11:30, 1 February 2021 (Monday) (Beijing time) 

Venue: T2-202, UIC

Abstract

Simulating amount and intensity of water uptake induced by plant roots are vital in agricultural science, environmental ecology and relevant engineering technology. Plant water uptake is sensitive to soil water pressure. However, continuous soil water extraction and evaporation can reduce soil water content and pore water pressure, resulting in decrease of plant water uptake. This process is called plant-soil hydraulic interactions, which could be only determined empirically with mechanisms unclear. The relationships of these interactions with plant morphology, soil properties and atmospheric conditions were emerging questions in simulations of root water uptake. This presentation will introduce how scientists and engineers could use a newly developed model to simulate soil water distribution resulted by soil water extraction using differential equations and numerical tools. Additionally, how two major challenges in this study, difficult in experiments, were eventually solved by mathematics. One is how to theoretically integrate previous results of different plant organs to model the behavior of entire plants, in condition that plant organs function differently responding to pressure change. The other is how to determine the intensity of root water uptake in experiments, which is unable to be measured directly but essential for verification of new model. Finally, this presentation will show how the mathematical model can explain many previous observations about plants with neat solutions, and how this model can guide and improve many kinds of important technologies, such as drip irrigation and slope stabilization.

About Dr. Wang

Dr. Zijian Wang is a visiting scholar in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has achieved his bachelor and doctor degree of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the same institute in 2020. He is an expert in plant physiology and geotechnical engineering as the author of several articles in most influential scientific journals in geotechnical engineering. He has developed a theoretical model firstly able to capture effects of plant morphology and atmospheric condition on plant-soil hydraulic interactions and reveal the mechanisms of several previously unexplained observations. His main research interests are plant-soil interactions, unsaturated soil mechanics and soil pollution remediation.