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Moisture condenses on the interiors of buildings due to specific interactions between the roof and wall. Leaks most commonly occur on flat-roofed buildings. [4]: 328 Certain building materials and mechanisms can be used to prevent condensation from occurring in these areas, therefore reducing structural dampness and potential mold infestation.
Inadequate drainage around a building can lead to excessive soil moisture, exerting pressure on the foundation. This can result in movement, heaving, or settling. Large trees near a building can have extensive root systems that extract moisture from the soil, causing it to shrink and destabilize the foundation.
Water is pulled by capillary action due to the adhesion force of water to the soil solids, producing a suction gradient from wet towards drier soil [50] and from macropores to micropores. [51] The so-called Richards equation allows calculation of the time rate of change of moisture content in soils due to the movement of water in unsaturated ...
Plant litter (also leaf litter, tree litter, soil litter, litterfall or duff) is dead plant material (such as leaves, bark, needles, twigs, and cladodes) that have fallen to the ground. This detritus or dead organic material and its constituent nutrients are added to the top layer of soil, commonly known as the litter layer or O horizon ("O ...
Potential evapotranspiration is expressed in terms of a depth of water or soil moisture percentage. If the actual evapotranspiration is considered the net result of atmospheric demand for moisture from a surface and the ability of the surface to supply moisture, then PET is a measure of the demand side (also called evaporative demand).
Ecophysiology (from Greek οἶκος, oikos, "house(hold)"; φύσις, physis, "nature, origin"; and -λογία, -logia), environmental physiology or physiological ecology is a biological discipline that studies the response of an organism's physiology to environmental conditions.
An individual tree can transpire hundreds of liters of water per day. For every 100 liters of water transpired, the tree then cools by 70 kWh. [20] [21] Urban heat island effects can be attributed to the replacement of vegetation by constructed surfaces. Deforested areas reveal a higher temperature than adjacent intact forest.
The term nutrient recycling appears in a 1964 paper on the food ecology of the wood stork: "While the periodic drying up and reflooding of the marshes creates special survival problems for organisms in the community, the fluctuating water levels favor rapid nutrient recycling and subsequent high rates of primary and secondary production" [47]: 97