Ultrasonic emissions reveal individual cavitation bubbles in water-stressed wood

Under drought conditions, the xylem of trees that conducts ascending sap produces ultrasonic emissions whose exact origin is not clear. We introduce a new method to record simultaneously both acoustic events and optical observation of the xylem conduits within slices of wood that were embedded in a transparent material setting a hydric stress. In this article, we resolved the rapid development of all cavitation bubbles and demonstrated that each ultrasound emission was linked to the nucleation of one single bubble, whose acoustic energy is an increasing function of the size of the conduit where nucleation occurred and also of the hydric stress. We modelled these observations by the fact that water columns in conduits store elastic energy and release it into acoustic waves when they are broken by cavitation bubbles. Water columns are thus elastic, and not rigid, 'wires of water' set under tension by hydric stresses. Cavitation bubbles are at the origin of an embolism, whose development was followed in our experiments. Such an embolism of sap circulation can result in a fatal condition for living trees. These findings provide new insights for the non-destructive monitoring of embolisms within trees, and suggest a new approach to study porous media under hydric stress.