please help me answer these critical thinking questions! CRITICAL THINKING QUEST
ID: 153727 • Letter: P
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please help me answer these critical thinking questions!
CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1. How do salty soils affect the matric potential and, in turn, affect root pressure and overall water uptake? 2. Based on your knowledge of the relationship between volume and surface area, why do clay soils hold more water than sandy soils? 3. If you were breeding cotton plants to have increased water uptake in dry soils, you could breed plants that contain more amino acids and carbohydrates in the root cells. Why would this be effective and why might crop yield be negatively affected? 4. How do CAM plants solve the problem of obtaining CO2 for photosynthesis while minimizing water loss? 5. How might the fitness cost of photorespiration in C3 plants favor the evolution of C4 plants? 6. How do leaf hairs that surround guard cells reduce water loss through the process of forming a boundary layer? 7. When animals hibernate, they lower their temperature. How would this reduce the rate of heat lost through conduction? 8. In addition to having highly efficient kidneys, what behaviors could you imagine desert animals using to reduce water loss? 9. If you designed an experiment to determine how temperature and the species composition of seeds affect the growth and reproduction of seed-eating birds, what would be the independent and dependent variables? 10. If you were to stand in a river with fast-moving water, which heat exchange processes might occur and why?Explanation / Answer
Salty soil and matric potential, root pressure and overall water uptake: Soil with salt content has less pores to maintain the matric potential. If there are large number of pores, the attachment of water with minerals and other particles of soil can be done. Since there are less pores, roots exert large pressure on the soil and root pressure increases leading to less water uptake. Water uptake is the ability of plants to take water from the soil. Clay soils expand due to the cracks it develops and water enter inside leading to increase in volume and in summer, water leaves behind clay being dry with the same shape. Moreover clay particles are smaller and the collective surface area of all the particles of clay is more so that the water covered is also more. It has lot of small pores than sand. Thus its water retaining capacity is higher for clay than sand. Breeding plants that contain more amino acids and carbohydrates enhances the pores in the soil by releasing the salt neutralising ions. In dry soils, increase in pores increases water flow and hence the water uptake will be higher. CAM plants stores CO2 during the night time so that its energy won't be lost in the day. But it utilizes the stored carbon di-oxide in day time in the photosynthesis reaction. During the day time they won't go for evapo-transpiration such that the water won't be lost from them thus maintaining the water retention capacity.
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