This webinar provides an examination of the scientific fundamentals and ecological implications of drought, specifically focusing on its influence on landscape vegetation. Through an analysis of the physiological responses of plants to drought stress, we will explore the consequential impacts within ecological contexts. Additionally, we will provide an in-depth review of contemporary management approaches, emphasizing interventions essential for mitigating the effects of drought on landscape plants. Participation promises an opportunity to connect scientific inquiry with applicable solutions for enhancing landscape resilience amidst water scarcity.
Al righty so we’re about a minute after people are still hopping on but we’re going to go ahead and get started I already have a question in the question box do you know when cus will be posted I expire soon in previous sessions have not been posted um I will
Check in on that and get back to you um just as a reminder that our CEUs posted at the end of this talk so people are still hopping on we’re coming up to about 200 attendees but we’ll go ahead and get started so I hope you can hear me okay uh my name
Is Kendra Wagner today I’m going to be talking a little bit about drought Management in the landscape again there are cees for this talk but I make you wait until the very end to see the ceu codes so um I really like to use the Q&A
Box if you have any questions please go ahead and throw them in there um and hopefully we’ll have lots of time at the end of the talk um to interact and and answer some of those questions y’all may have so we’ll go ahead and hop in oh I have one person already raising
Their hand if y’all have questions if you can go ahead and put it in the Q&A Box all righty so my name is Kendra Wagner I’m a research scientist with rainbow ecoscience um essentially what that means is I run research trials all across the country and I work to find oh you do have some questions popping in I just want to make sure you guys can hear me
Okay okay just some Isa numbers hopping in all righty um essentially what I do and what my job entails is running research trials across the country um I work to find innovative solutions to some of the issues you guys are dealing with uh in your landscape um I conduct
Uh research trials on palms and specifically on Ro which we’re going to talk about today um I work to develop new protocols so the protocols that y’all follow to apply our products or use our products in the landscape um typically are stemming from the R&D Department which I’m a member of so this
Is my uh contact information I have a QR code at the end of the talk as well that um will take you right to my business card if you want to wait all righty so here’s an agenda for today first we’re going to start by defining drought so I want you guys to
Be able to wrap your head around what drought means where it comes from and why we care about it I also want to talk about measuring drought how do we measure drought within the landscape I want to talk about the impacts of drought on your Landscapes what you
Might see some of the signs and symptoms and then finally we’re going to talk about managing drought within the landscape and how we might be able to do that so we have three main objectives of our talk today so if I do a good job y’all be able to walk away today by
Understanding the complexity of dro within our environment I want you to be able to Define throat and its impact that’s very important I want you to have a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of throat on our plants and then finally understand management options to reduce drought stress within the
Landscape so again if I’m successful you guys will be able to do all of these so what is drought specifically it’s something that we hear about a lot in the news sometimes we deal with it on a day-to-day depending on where you’re living in the country so what is it
Exactly we have right now about 200 participants and about 300 attendees for this talk from all over the country okay so I wanted to pull photos that were representative of different regions throughout the US okay here we see photos from North Carolina Colorado California and Texas all showing the
Impacts of drought specifically with low water reservoirs which we’ll get into in just one minute so how do we Define drought this definition is provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Noah are the guys that we typically get our our weather information specifically severe weather information from and they
Define drought as drought is the deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time it is a part of normal climate variability in many climate zones the duration of drought varies widely drought can develop quickly and last only for a matter of weeks and can be exacerbated by extreme
Heat or wind more commonly drought can persist for months or years and although I don’t need you to commit this definition to memory there are a couple things that I want to take from in first I want to conceptualize that drought is something that occurs all
Around the globe okay we see drought in parts of Africa Europe South America and also Al here in North America and what’s important to remember that drought as a condition here in the US might be very different from a drought that happens in Canada even in parts of Africa and parts
Of Europe so a dry or drought condition here may be different from where other people are experiencing it as well we’re going to hone in today just on US based route though and it’s important to realize that this happens over time and it’s a very normal part of
Our weather system here in North America we experience it usually in very common areas California some across the Midwest definitely in Texas these are areas that are just naturally prone to Drought okay and that can be due to a number of different reasons it could be soil type
Amount of precipitation that this area gets on an annual basis whether this area can support snow accumulation there are a number of different reasons why some areas in the country might be more from to Drought conditions what’s important to remember though is drought is just part of normal climate change
And normal climate variability in fact it’s important that some areas in the country actually experience drought some plants and animals in California rely on some drought conditions intermittently throughout the year in order to survive unfortunately though with increased temperatures and decreased rainfall we can see and experience extend ensive drought conditions now
It’s important that both of these are met we must have increased temperatures and decrease rainfall over time in order for it to be classified as a drought condition if either of these are not met it will not be a drought if we have decreased temperatures and decreased rainfall we don’t consider that a
Drought condition and vice versa unfortunately with changing climate and climate variability we are seeing an increase in drought frequency and duration over time and when we dive into some of the impacts of drought you’re going to recognize why this is so important so there are four main types
Of drought and again you don’t need to commit these to memory it’s not important that you are able to Define some of these it is however important that we understand the different types of drought and how they can affect not only our Landscapes but just our day-to-day lives the first one being
Meteorological drought mete olical drought is essentially defined as the degree of dryness for a length of time okay and meteorological drought is typically what we hear about on the news or when we’re looking at our our day-to-day weather forecast okay just degree of dryness or a rainfall deficit over
Time with certain degrees of dryness and if it gets bad enough if we have rainfall deficit over an extended period of time it can then impact hydrological drought Hy hydrological drought is essentially when there’s so much of a rainfall deficit that it impacts our water supply so when we’re talking about
Hydrological growth we’re no longer talking about a day-to-day dryness or a day-to-day rainfall deficit we’re talking about a rainfall deficit that is long enough and severe enough to impact things like Stream flow Reservoir levels lake levels and overall uh groundwater tables if hydrological throat becomes severe enough we can see other trickle
Down impacts to things like Agriculture and socioeconomic drought agriculture to Drought just as it sounds is essentially when there is a drought that is impacting agriculture in the country okay this can be due to rainfall deficits which can lead to soil dryness as we said reduce groundwater and um
Reservoir levels and it can increase the need for irrigation if agricultural drought gets bad enough we see impacts in supply and demand across the country and then that can bleed into what we call socioeconomic drought again this is when the drought is severe enough and bad enough that is going to impact the
Supply and demand chain throughout the country okay and that can be of goods or other products so we hear a lot about different weather events here in the country I know we’re getting a lot of rain right now on the west coast and some snow in the Northeast um and it’s
Important to recognize that yes all of these are really bad weather events okay and they’re becoming more and more frequent and severe with changing climates drought however is the most costliest weather related event the US has sustained 265 climate disasters what we consider a climate disaster since 1980 and the cost
Of these has been over $1.7 trillion and this cost can be damage to infrastructure um damage to agriculture as we said earlier so so economic damage and so on so we’re going to introduce the water cycle and this is something that you might be familiar with maybe from like
High school biology might have talked about this and this is a very simplified version but it’s going to be okay for for what we’re going to talk about today so the water cycle is essentially the cycle of water that happens in our environment okay and I’m going to talk
About this on a broad range or on a broad scale but while I’m talking about it I want you to reflect on on how this might be impacting your environment and then I want you to reflect on the last landscape you were in that was drought stressed and how each one of these
Aspects of the water cycle came into play in that specific landscape so we start with precipitation obviously precipitation is rainfall it can also be uh snowfall or snow packed any amount of uh precipitation that is entering the environment we then have collection and that goes into those streams and water
Tables that we were talking about earlier and this can fluctuate it should over time but in increased drought it can actually decrease quite significantly we then have evaporation and evaporation can be facilitated by a number of different things but in our uh situation and in our jobs we like to
Look at evaporation specifically through plants okay and we’re going to talk about that in just one minute and then finally condensation and again this is a very simp simplified water cycle but I just want you to think about what these look like in your environment since we
Do have people from across the country but also last time you were in a drought stressed landscape what ones of these might have been impacting that that landscape so transporation is really really important and it’s something that as landscape managers we deal with every day okay and I want to introduce this to
You and walk you through the science of it this is very Elementary level but we’re going to come back to this several times throughout the talk and a couple of these Concepts that I’m introducing now we’re going to be expanding on later so water of course is in the soil okay
And it’s absorbed into the roots from there it travels through the plant and then evaporates from the leaf surface so if you reflect back to the water cycle this transpiration Falls right in that evaporation category okay it’s the facilitation of water to go from the soil into our atmosphere
This transpiration can change it can increase it can decrease it can even shut off entirely depending on water levels and it’s all through chemical Pathways within the plant if we have low amount of soil water we’re going to see decreased transpiration if we have high amount of soil water we might see
Increased transpiration and vice versa it all depends on the soil type the amount of water the type of plant we’re dealing with and also the temperature so when we’re talking about drought and we’re talking about its impact on the plants okay so we’re we’ve talked about transporation and how water
Moves through the plant but what is it doing to the plant specifically there are a number of different things that happen to a plant under either decreased or increased water capacity we see physiological trait changes okay specifically in leaves we see stomatal regulation turar loss point we’re going
To talk about turar pressure in just a minute cuticular conductive so the conductive of the cuticle of the leaf you see changes in those depending on the amount of moisture in our environment we also see changes in Roots like rooting depth fine root loss root to- shoot ratio which is something that
We’ve all talked about before we see differences in soil root hydrological conductance okay under differing levels of water in the soil we’re going to see this conductance is going to change under lower water pressure or lower amount of water in our soil we’re going to see root shrink AG we’re going to see
Isolation in the shoots we’re going to see Leaf vein density decrease stomatal Anatomy is going to change overall we might even see a total loss in leaf area we’re going to see smaller leaves we see Leaf shedding um and also maybe Leaf to sapwood area ratio might change so this
Is all important when you think of how a tree or how a plant works or actually functions in our environment and all of the different areas that water might play a role so this is a very simplified version of what we call turer pressure okay and I introduced turer pressure earlier and I
Want to talk about it a little bit here I think when we think of a drought stress plant we see flagging or maybe a shriveled up plant shriveled up leaves um it might be drooping a little bit and the reason for that is because of the turer pressure within the plant cell
When we have a lot of water available within the plant the water’s able to move through the root and then into the plant and it’s able to support that enlarged vacle that we see on the left side here here we can see that little blue bubble is full of H2O it’s full of
Water within the plant cell and it’s pushing open think of it like a water balloon so it’s able to push against the cell walls and support that plant upright we see perky leaves it’s not drooping it’s a very happy Health happy happy healthy plant with high trigar pressure unfortunately
When we lose water in the soil like we see on the right we enter what we call a flaccid State okay that little blue balloon is able to shrink think again like we pop that water balloon and it’s no longer pushing up against that cell wall and providing that support since we
Have this shrunken vacu and this um cell wall is able to cave in we then see this flaccid plant we see um saggy leaves we might see drooping and other impacts within the leaf tissue as well so I’d like to introduce this just so that you can see what’s going on under
The hood so to speak when you see a a wilted or drought stress plant so how does drought impact our Landscapes okay and and again we have people from all over the country on The Talk today and this is going to change depending on where you are but I’m going
To go over a couple of different signs and symptoms that you might experience in a drought stressed landscape here are two very Telltale photos of drought stress okay and the first things we might see are these flagging or drooping leaves we might see this burnup if it’s bad enough and as
Soon as you walk onto a landscape you’re going to see that this landscape is drought stress just based on these but let’s break it down a little further what else might we see in the landscape if it’s drought stressed we’ll start with the leaves so specifically with the leaves we might
See drooping as we saw in those previous images we’ll certainly see yellowing or scorching as we see on the left side and in some of the photos on the right we’ll see what you call flagging within the plant so the flagging of the leaves and then also sence these these leaves might
Die um or have early die off in the year because they are so drought stressed we also see drought impacts on flowers and flowering plants now hydranges are really great because they’ll tell you right away if they’re drought stress they’ve got that big heavy flower head that will droop or sag
And then those big leaves with very large Le surface area that will also duper sag if they are drought stressed we also see reduced flour production we’ll also see late flower production in areas of the Midwest we’re seeing apples that bloom late into the fall under drought conditions and smaller or
Stunted flowers which we can see here on the right side of your screen when we take a step back from the plant and we look at the overall canopy there are a few telltale signs that this plant is in fact drought stressed okay we’re not dealing with an insect we’re not
Dealing with a pathogen let’s take a step back and look at the canopy and see what might be happening that might tell us that it is drought that we’re dealing with the first thing you might notice is a thinning canopy so this photo on the top left we can see especially
Considering the ones surrounding this tree this canopy is thinner than it should be okay there’s clearly something going on here we might see Leaf loss or Leaf Drop early in the year we might see a reduced fles if we have a drought that falls early in the year or a tree that
Historically has been drought stressed we’ll see a reduced flush okay not as many leaves are going to come out the ones that do come out might be stunted or smaller than usual and it’s just reduced canopy overall and then finally if we have years consecutive years that
Are um drought conditions we might see plant death okay and that’s under extreme conditions over time one thing that’s really important to consider and really recognize in our landscape is that we’re not just dealing with drought okay if we have a landscape that is drought stressed we might be
Able to mitigate it through uh irrigation or a number of other tools that we’re going to introduce in a minute but what’s important is that we understand other systems and mechanisms that are at play here the one that I really like to focus on is insect interaction with drow insect interaction
With Dro is something that is commonly overlooked in urban forestry and Forest management and it’s an interaction that’s very very important and can impact every mechanism or every system that we’re looking at when our plants are drought stressed we see decreased plant defense mechanisms okay those are
Both physical and chemical so we’ve got physical plant defense mechanisms that includes bark thickness Leaf cuticle um some plants have other physical uh properties like spikes or um rough edges on their leaves when a plant is drought stressed these mechanisms are not present at all or not as present as they
Should be or decreased okay we can also see what we call a phenological miss mismatch a phenological mismatch is when an insect population under higher Growing Degree Days or increased temperatures over time is able to emerge earlier than its natural predator so we could have insect populations in some
Areas that are drought stressed or experiencing higher temperatures over time these insect populations can emerge and do more damage to the plants because their natural Predators like some birds or or other insects don’t emerge until later on in the year and they’re not able to develop as fast as these insects
So we can have these phenological mismatches that occur even with insect populations we can also see greater populations of insects again if we’re seeing higher temperatures and greater Growing Degree Days than we usually do we can have greater populations of insects and potentially damaging insects
Like the one that we have right here we also see especially with insects like Southern pine beetle and mountain pine beetle that they can actually extend their range past what they normally do okay and what happens is when a pest or an insect is able to expand their range
Past their normal range they go into what we call um unoccupied territory or naive hosts okay these naive hosts lack natural co-evolution mechanisms so if a southern pine beetle from the southeast us is able to expand its range into the Northeast us like New Jersey like it is
Now those Pines that are present in New Jersey don’t have those natural co-evolved self-defense mechanisms to be able to defend against the Southern Pine Beal so again with increased temperatures we see these expanding ranges of insects into areas that might not have these defense mechanisms or natural predators to keep those populations at
Bay we also a really interesting interaction depending on the feeding Guild of the insect we see long severe drought can actually decrease secondary defense compounds within the plant so all of those chemicals that are present in the plant that allow it to defend against predators will decrease over
Time with long and severe droughts we see that during drought stress times trees will actually emit pheromones that will attract pests more okay so specifically with pines we see a lot of fer hormones that occur in Pine stress stands or stress Pine stands sorry that will actually attract pests like pine
Beetles or wood boring L like what we see here as I mentioned earlier we see a really interesting interaction with feeding Guild and what I mean by feeding Guild is is it a leaf Miner or um a vegetative insect or is it a wood boring insect we see that woodborers and bark
Beetles are more severe during severe severe drought conditions okay so greater drought conditions we see greater woodborers and greater bark beetles but during moderate drought conditions we actually see an increase in sap sucking insects and leaf miners so again a very interesting interaction between varying levels of drought and feeding Guilds of
Insects so how can we manage drought in a landscape okay I’ve painted a pretty nasty picture okay drought’s getting worse and climate change and everything else so what can we do about it okay what can you as landscape managers do about Dr the first thing that I want to
Introduce is just cultural practices okay now these are things that I want you to do whether you’re thinking we’re going to get a drought or not okay these are things when you’re planning a landscape or when you’re planning care for your landscape over the next 5 years
Just things that you should consider not considering if we’re going to if we’re going to have a drought or not or if there is a drought forecasted the first one is just to reduce water stress this is something we should be doing regardless of drought conditions okay
And what this does is it allows water levels to remain at an acceptable level and then if we do get hit with a drought we have acceptable water levels to sustain things like irrigation also if you’re able to practice rainwater harvesting at home reduce irrigation at home and practice
Rainwater harvesting I understand that’s difficult to do as landscape managers but if you can do this at home absolutely I encourage it you should always be mulching your Landscapes mulching allows us to reduce soil temperatures retain soil moisture and increase organic matter of the soil as well this allows us to actually
Increase the efficacy of irrigation within the landscape again under drought conditions or not you should always consider planting drought resistant species especially in City centers um and that can also vary depending on where you are in the country but it’s important that when we’re planting these species we consider
Grow resistant species and then finally reduce Hardscape in the landscape okay Hardscape is anything like concrete or anything that is not water penetrable and what this will do increased Hardscape will actually increase the temperature of a landscape it can be as simple as having a sidewalk in your
Front yard y that can increase the overall temperature of that property so if we do get hit with a drought we’re more likely to have a drought stress landscape if we have a lot of Hardscape surrounding us it also is not water penetrable so when we do irrigate and we
Hit this Hardscape in our landscape we’re not able to get proper irrigation to the ground or the roots underneath it so always consider things like grass or other Gardens um within your landscape to reduce uh Hardscape overall now these are proactive practices this is what you would
Consider doing if you may be faced with drought conditions okay so looking forward into this year are we forecasting a drought year for 2024 maybe you should be considering one of these practices the first one is just to reduce plant stress okay if we’re thinking that we’re going to have a drug
Condition within the the next few months we want to reduce overall plant stress okay and this goes back to those natural fence those natural self-defense compounds by reducing overall plant stress in the landscape the plants are able to increase these self-defense compounds and better mitigate stress within the landscape okay so if we
Reduce pruning um or mitigate extreme soil compaction we’re better equipping our plants to be able to fend off against drought stress we want to irrigate appropriately and when I say appropriately I mean deep and infrequent watering to encourage deep root formation okay we want to make sure that those re those roots are
Reaching down within the soil and then they’re able to access more soil moisture if we do get faced with a drought condition later on we can also apply a number of different products that can encourage root growth and reduce St stomatal activity we’ll talk about those in just one minute
And it’s always a good idea to apply a product like moisture Aid which might not be able to directly help with drought stress but it might help us be able to retain soil moisture over time so first we’re going to talk about moistu okay as I said moistu a might not
Help us reduce plant stress directly but it’s a good practice to incorporate just to increase soil moisture over time so moistu has a number of different products in it or a number of different um ingredients and the three main Superstars are car carboxylic acid humant and soil surfactant okay now each
Of these do something different to your soil or to your plant but the one that I’ll focus on is carboxilic acid because it’s one that we hear about a lot so what does carboxilic acid do carboxilic acid can work to increase the osmotic pressure so if you remember we talked
About triger pressure earlier carboxilic acid allows us to increase osmotic pressure with within the plant it also helps fac facilitate the transportation of nutrients and sugars within the plant as well so again it might not help us if we’re under an extreme drought and it might not help reduce that stress but
It’s only going to support your plant under drought conditions there’s also other products we can add like diard root revivor or biochar or compost any of these if we are thinking that we might have a drought situation later on in the year are good to just add to your landscape
Supporting proper soil structure and supporting things like Miz and bacteria within your soil are only going to increase your plant health and help them fend off against drought stress down the road so I want to bring us back to the water cycle that we talked about earlier so we’ve talked about precipitation okay
And fortunately we can’t control the weather we can’t control the amount of precipitation that we’re going to get over time sometimes we can irrigate although in a lot of areas in the country they’re saying if we’re under extreme drought we can’t irrigate we talked about collection and maybe soil
Structure or soil Health how we can improve that or improve collection if we can reduce irrigation over time and help raise or maintain those water reservoir levels now what about evaporation if we are hit with a drought and we can’t control precipitation and we can’t control collection or water
Reservoir levels what can we do then we might be able to help with evaporation within our landscape and furthermore help transpiration within our plants so I want to talk about this molecule paclobutrazol is something that I think most people on this call have either used or heard about okay and it’s
The main active ingredient in our products trimtech and canvas stat okay you might have applied this F yearly to your plants or even as a soil application to your to your trees now what is puchol and what does it do and and what does that have to do
With drill okay usually these products are used as plant growth Regulators but today I’m going to talk about how you can use them to reduce overall plant stress so taking us back to this transpiration we’ve got the The Roots which are absorbing the water moves through the plant and then it evaporates
From the least surface but if we cut off that that soil water and that soil is very very dry we have no other water in our environment that our plant can access but what if we could shut off this evaporation what if we could shut down this stomatal conductivity and
Reduce the amount of transpiration from our plant we might be able to reduce the amount of drought stress over time so pabol has a number of different gilc acids okay and it’s essentially a plant growth regulator that’s what we usually use it for and that’s likely what you’ve
Used it for to regulate plants whether they be shrubs or trees okay now what does paczol do pacol reduces jolic acid which is the cell elongation hormone okay and this is something again if you’ve used it you’re familiar with this okay this results in less cell elongation and enlargement of new tissue
It also frees up elements to create more chlorophyll which is what we want in the leaf okay we want that higher chlorophyll that green glossy material in our plants it also increases abscissic acid so the plant protection hormone so it stimulates root growth triggers closing of stomata and protect cells from
Dehydration so some of us might be familiar with what we call a type 1 pgr we don’t need to get too far into this but type 1 pgrs are essentially pgrs that block cell division they prevent the cell from dividing over and over and over again okay type 2 b pgr which is
What we see in trim and cat um actually reduces the elongation of that cell okay so we see here what a normal growth would look like what a prune growth would look like and then pgr so we see each one of those green boxes are just you know represent a cell
And with pgr growth we see that tight compact growth over time and in the photo on your right you see a tree that’s been treated with cisat you see one year treated growth and one year untreated growth so we’re still getting some growth it’s just those cells are more
Compact it’s not too important that we go into the hormone signaling Pathways and antioxidants of a plant but what I want to take under sorry what I want to take out of this um diagram here is the top plant has not been treated with pabol okay that’s our control we see
Drought we see a decrease in chlorophyll contents we see a decrease in photosynthesis an increase cellular damage under drought and no paclobutrazol treatment alternatively this same plant under drought stress that has been treated with pacol has a total interruption in this pathway more specifically we see increased chlorophyll contents and we
See decreased photosynthesis okay what that means is we’re not going to have as much of that stomatal conductivity we’re going to be able to keep more of that moisture within the plant this is just a diagram that shows us these closed stoat so so again under the higher concentration of obic acid
When treated with pisol we’re able to close those stomata or make them smaller and slow the movement of gas or water through them again keeping more moisture within the plant if we can’t get it from the soil maybe we can keep it in the plant for
Longer these are just a couple of images of a Cherry Bark Oak that have been treated with pisol okay so the photo on the left uh I believe this is is an electron scanning microscope the one on the left we see un untreated the one on the right has been treated with
Pisol okay and what we see is that leaves treated with paclobutrazol are thicker and better able to retain moisture over time this can also translate to the insect and pest pathogen that I was talking about earlier with thicker leaves these plants are able to defend themselves more regularly against things like uh Leaf
Chewing insects as well as folar diseases we also see this um in triome hairs so this is again a scanning microscope of a cherry bar Oak we’ve got the photo on the left is untreated and the photo on the right is treated with paclobutrazol and each one of those
Hairs is a Tricom and we see about a five time increase um which allows us to slow moisture um loss during hot and dry periods again providing greater protection against not only drought but also insects and disease so we wanted to see what this looked like in a trial okay we wanted to
Take this out to the field and apply it and see if we had similar efficacy in shrubs outside so what we did and again this is a very simplified version of our treatments and breakdown over time we took um shrubs potted shrubs we had a moistu rate application we treated with
Trim TCT and Audible and then we had had water controls and and other treatments we then reduced irrigation over time okay so some of these were um exposed to standard 100% irrigation some of these were exposed to reduce irrigation over time okay and then at the end we actually shut irrigation off
Completely to see what would happen and how these plants would react so there’s a lot of different bars here we’ll walk through them slowly we’ve got total soil moisture measured on the left okay measured as a percentage we’ve got date on your xaxis along the bottom and a number of
Different bars okay and the two that I really want to focus on are the trimtech treatment which is the orange treatment and then also we’ve got water and humic acid treatments and polymers and other things that we wanted to look at so what’s important in this graph we saw that plants treated with
Pack utol trim Tech were actually actually had a higher soil moisture over time under drought conditions when compared to anything else in this trial so what we’re seeing is that as we’re decreasing stomatal conductivity and we’re decreasing the amount of moisture loss from the plant we’re allowed to
Keep soil moisture higher the plant isn’t needing to take up as much soil or as much moisture sorry and so we’re able to keep the amount of moisture within the soil at greater level when we treat with puchol what else are we see okay so this graph looks at total plant ratings so
Again we had a bunch of different treatments and a bunch of different plants some of them had um humic acid moisture a polymers trim te and just water we had normal irrigation we cut it off over time and then we just let them dry down what did we
See we saw overall again I want you to look at this orange bar here right on the right pabol treated plants had a higher condition rating under drought conditions okay so that just means that under pathol treatment or in this case trim TCT could also be applied to
Cambistat we saw that the plants after we cut off irrigation had higher plant ratings they were healthier overall okay and significantly so you can see it compared to all of the other treatments so what do we want to take from this whoops sorry about that y’all drought is a global and Nationwide
Phenomenon okay it’s something that we deal with around the world and it’s something that we deal with every year here in the US we see reduced water impact on leaves with flagging or sagging flowers with delayed or decreased flower production we see stunted flowers um and we also see it in the
Canopy we see reduced Leaf out reduced Leaf flush we see Leaf thinning Leaf canopy thinning um we see overall decreased plants plant defense mechanisms okay so we see that um both in the leaves as well as in the bark the physical defense mechanisms as well as the chemical defense mechanisms moistu a
Mulch and proper irrigation are just great as a cultural practice to implement into your Landscapes it’s something that you should consider even if we might not get a drill okay even now when we’re in planning stages it’s very important to consider products like trimtech and cambistat that are paczol based they can
Decrease extreme drought stress okay by again closing those stamata reducing stamata conductivity keeping more water in the plant reducing overall water need in the plant and even translating to higher soil moisture over time so here again is just a slide with my contact information we are always
Looking for um trial sites we’re always looking to do this drop trial in the field so um if you’re interested in um actually doing a trial or being involved in a trial or looking into this stuff further please don’t hesitate to reach out to me um even if you want to talk
About it a little bit further I’d love to chat about it more um I made you wait until the very end to get your ceu codes so here is your CE code um and remember if you didn’t add your isic ID number um please place your first and last name in
Is iscu in the chat I see a lot of people have already done it um and we’ll make sure that we get those recorded so that’s it we finished a little bit early but we have lots of time for questions if anybody has questions about some of the content that
I covered here today or anything else I’d be happy to um to answer those um so most of what I see is a CU stuff so let me just sort through these okay so the first question I got is what is your opinion on mulching newly
Planted trees some say it’s a good idea and others say they shouldn’t be mulched right away because they need air exchange through bare soil um I personally have never heard the argument that they shouldn’t be mulched right away um I believe that especially when we’re planting trees in urban
Environments with just really poor soil oil um mulching your trees is Al always something that you should be um encouraged to do especially if you’re practicing proper irrigation that mulch layer is only going to keep that soil moisture high and really encourage those roots to develop and form into that new
Site that you’ve planted it in I hope that answer your question Dennis okay Mary says do you have suggested plant lists based on how predicted change rainfall patterns will change Landscaping choices so that’s a really great great question Mary and um essentially what I would recommend is reaching out to your extension
Specialist in your area they will be able to walk you through what plant you should be um considering based on where you’re living based on your soil type if we are going to be experiencing drought into the future they’ll be able to guide you on what plants you should be considering
Dennis asked what is your opinion about incorporating organic amendments when planting trees again I always encourage organic amendments as long as they’re not um you know disrupting the structure of the soil too much we don’t want that rub ball to be too loose but I always always always encourage organic
Amendments I think it can really help um again as long as you’re not uh disrupting that soil structure and providing that loose root ball where that tree might be um unstable organic amendments are always going to help they’re always going to be able to improve that soil which usually if
You’re planting in an urban area that soil is not great soil does pachol have similar results on coniferous trees I believe so yes so we do see similar results on coniferous trees I will always um stress though to read and follow the rate label if you
Are putting pisol on a tree or a shrub make sure that you’re following the rat based on that tree species okay we don’t want to burn up your trees because of Packa beol and we’re trying to um make them stronger against drought so make sure that you’re always breeding and
Following the label um based on the product that you’re using do wood boring insects feed more during drought because they need to try harder to acquire nutrients and moisture or is it primarily because tree defenses are down typically it’s because tree defenses are down most wood boring
Insects have a very specific type of microbiome in their gut that allows them to actually extract nutrients from either a symbiotic fungus in the wood or from the wood itself depending on the insect that we’re talking about so typically when we’re seeing wood boring insects feeding more it’s because they
Might have higher populations for that year because of increase temperatures we might have seen an earlier emergence of those wood boring insects we see um a lot of plants actually let off that stress pheromone which will attract more insects to that plant if it’s stressed and then we also see things like pitch
Decrease so a lot of plants will have this um when they’re getting attacked by a wood boring insect they’ll be able to what we say pitch them out or push them out with sap or pitch depending on what we’re talking about if we have decreased water within that tree it might not be
Able to do that as efficiently so not only are we seeing this increase in stress signal from the tree that’s attracting the insect but we’re also seeing that the tree is not able to push it out as it normally would I hope that answer your question Luke
Um do any of the products you mentioned have a negative effect on soil organisms so that’s a really good question Dennis so Dennis ask do any of the any of the products that I mentioned have negative effect on soil organisms there may be a decreased effect on soil organisms but what you
Have to remember is the area that you’re applying this product to so the area that you’re applying let’s say cambistat in the soil is very very small when you consider the amount of root structure that you’re dealing with so even if there might be an impact on soil
Microorganisms compared to the amount of soil microorganisms that that tree is actually in contact with it’s it’s not important okay you’re not going to see an impact over time and then with things like um trim Tech or anything that you’re applying F yearly you shouldn’t see an impact um I hope that answered
Your question um do you have any pointers on how to reduce drought when it comes to site design and topography a hilly sight versus a flat one okay that’s a really good question so pointers to reduce drout when it comes to site design and topography um I
Would always you know talk to an extension agent based on where you are because they’re going to know more than I do um just based on your specific environment and ecosystem that you’re dealing with but if you’re dealing with an area that might be at a high
Elevation and you might be dealing with a drought you might want to consider planting things that um maybe are deeply rooted or maybe help um keep that soil moisture high so maybe thicker vegetation areas um you always want to consider uh mulching at those elevations to try and again keep that soil moisture
In there as much as possible um and just you know a couple of different things like that might help but in terms of low elevation I mean there’s not much you can do if you’re dealing with drought at low ele elevation since water rolls downhill um again just basic practices
That that we chatted about here increase ining overall um mulching and proper irrigation to encourage that deep root structure is is always encouraged can I see your contact info again yes we can whoops chat is disabled so if you’d like to chat um please drop it it uh just in
Um the Q&A so I can answer it live if you don’t mind okay have you had clients concerned with reduced Leaf size after some applications on Oaks or Maples rare but has happened is there a computation for decreased Leaf size to reduce photosynthetic area and the impact on
That tree’s energy that’s a really really good question um so we will see reduced Leaf size in some treatments of um of pack utol okay but we do see increased FL chlorophyll production over time okay so it’s not something that you should be worried about we see that even though it does
Have a decreased Leaf size you’re still able to increase that chlori production which is just that Powerhouse of that leaf so um it’s really not something that you should be worried about in terms of the plant energy itself um although we do see smaller leaves um we’re seeing increased uh photosynthetic
Activity of those leaves because they’re able to be um smaller darker green with a greater waxy cuticle where does the ceu code go uh you should have a sheet that you submit to ISA I believe um and that’s where that should go you can make sure Christopher that you drop your name and
Your Isa code here in the chat and we can make sure that we’re that you’re captured okay Matt uh can you speak to the appropriate irrigation cycles that could be used for the southeast okay that’s a good question um so whereever you are I would reach out to your
Extension specialist I’m sorry I can’t provide you a better answer and I tried my best Matt to incorporate that into this presentation because I would love to give you guys like the golden ticket on how much you should irrigate and how frequently and everything um but everywhere I looked um you know you’re
Going to get a different answer some people say in the midwest you should irrigate um you know once a week is fine but then they say in Texas it’s three times a week so I really think it depends on your soil type it depends on the weather for that specific day or
Week um the type of uh plants that you’re dealing with newly planted you might want to irrigate more frequently um so what I would really do Matt is maybe reach out to um extension at Mississippi State University because I think you’re in Mississippi um so maybe
Reach out to extension and they can walk you through that a little bit more watching from Australia oh that’s so exciting we’ve got Australia and Canada on the on the uh talk today okay is there an issue with using Paca butol on newly planted tree okay that’s a really
Good question we can see some very strange regulation with pabol on newly planted trees some people might want to use it to increase fine root matter um you want to be really careful as I said you might see some really strange regulation some really strange root and
Choot growth um if you treat newly planted trees with packo futol so you want to be really careful about that hey lots of um chat disabled comments so um just pop it in the Q&A if you don’t mind we’re able to um moderate a little bit easier when things are popped into
The QA and then we also have access to it after the talk to make sure that we capture everybody’s cus so um if you have a question um if you don’t mind just pop in the question and answer um want to be mindful of time here is deep infrequent watering uh does
Deep deep infrequent watering work for all soil types yes absolutely okay so um if you’re dealing with let’s say a clay based soil you want to make sure that you’re practicing deep deep infrequent watering okay some of that clay based soil might be able to move that water
Laterally quite easily and with the sand-based soil it’s the opposite effect both of those you want to make sure that you are doing deep and infrequent waterings okay slow trickle watering um will always encourage those roots to grow deeper into the ground which not only helps now with things like
Establishment and being able to access things like micronutrients but it’s going to help if we are in a drought condition because those roots are spreading far and wide and are able to access a larger area for soil moisture if you have a root ball that’s really contained and very small it’s only going
To be able to access soil moisture in that immediate area but if you’re practicing this deep infrequent watering even in different soil types it’ll allow those roots to se long and far and it’ll access more soil moisture over time so no matter the soil type I always recommend deep and infrequent watering
That can be done with um I’ve seen it done even just with a bucket with holes poked in the bottom is really great um Gator bags or tree bags are always great um any type of trickle watering system is um really ideal when we’re talking about um plants or even shrubs
You mentioned we should put your Isa number in the chat but it’s disabled should we send the ISA code directly to ISA so um make sure that you’re putting your name and your Isa code here in Q&A just so I can I can capture it and a lot
Of you are doing that so thank you listening from Singapore all righty so we’re winding down on time here I think I have um everybody’s questions answered everything else looks like um a lot of Isa credits so that’s fantastic I’m happy you guys are getting these in here
Um so if there’s any final questions if you want to pop those in the Q&A um and then other than that we can wind down for the day we’re running out of time here and I want to be respectful of everybody’s time
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