Plant physiology will be major contributor to future river flooding

Honestly, if a region is deforested it creates faster run-off creating flooding, and now if it’s too green it’ll create faster run-off creating flooding?!?! Funny, is this modelling supported by an actual eco-system example like, say, for instance, the AMAZON??

They premise of the article is flawed because of at least one major unstated assumption by the author(s):
That all else will remain equal while plants use less water under conditions of ever increasing CO2.

This is of course an unwarranted assumption, and almost certainly not the case.
CO2 concentration increasing causes plants to grow fast, by a lot.
Faster growth means larger and more heavily foliated plants and trees.
In fact the changes which will occur are sure to be numerous and complex, and the feedbacks large.
The entire premise seems to be very poorly conceived and thought out, and the conclusion follows the typical alarmist narrative: Anything that changes due to more CO2 in the air is bad, disastrous even.
Not even given a mention are the numerous positives that might result from plants requiring less moisture to thrive, although the idea raised does point to one more possible benefit: Enhanced groundwater recharge rates.

I see no evidence that the author(s) have any particular knowledge of or insight into hydrology or botany.
The entire thing is chock full of densely overlapping grammatical and scientific mistakes.
A middle schooler might get points deducted from an assay for this sentence, for example:
“Plants get more water-efficient and leak less underground soil moisture through their pores in a carbon-rich atmosphere…”

Leak less underground soil moisture?
Is this as opposed to leaking less above-ground soil moisture?

And leaking water through their pores? Is this a reference to the basic process known, even to grade school kids, as “transpiration”? I think it must be.
Also familiar to anyone who has even elementary school knowledge of plant physiology is that plant have structures called stomata, not “pores”!

And what is up with this reference to a “carbon-rich atmosphere”?
For one thing, regardless of the fact that calling CO2 “carbon” is now a widespread misnomer, it is still wrong, and an utterly unscientific usage to call it that.
Additionally by well recognized historical standards, even the current 400+ ppm of CO2 can only be seen as highly depleted in CO2.

And this single sentence is largely representative of the entire essay in regard to being poorly written to the point of being factually wrong, as well as appearing to have been produced by someone who is barely scientifically literate.

Let’s look at this paragraph:
“In a study published in Nature Climate Change, the researchers describe the emerging role of interrelationships of organisms and their environment in understanding flooding. Adapting to an overabundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, trees, plants and grasses constrict their pores to regulate the amount of CO2 they consume, a mechanism that limits the release of water from leaves through evaporation.”

The interrelationships between organisms and the environment is not an “emerging role”. These relationships may in fact be changing, but that is besides the point: What is being described is an emerging UNDERSTANDING, by the authors apparently, if no one else. Although it certainly seem to be an emerging misunderstanding. I suppose misunderstanding is one type of understanding.
This mistakes and BS in this one paragraph could be the subject of an essay.
CO2 is asserted to be in a state of overabundance, with no evidence or reason given to believe such is the case. Only by understanding that this idea is a central tenet of the global warming alarmism religious dogma can this assertion be accounted for.
The term “pores” is used in place of stomata, as previously noted. Simply stated, the word pores is not interchangeable with stomata. Stomata are a type of pore, yes. But pore just meanings a small opening.
Plants have other types of pores.
And the pore is just part of the stoma, and does not exist the stoma is closed. IOW, the pore is the aperture itself, which is regulated by several complex and in some cases poorly understood processes involving pairs of cells called guard cells.
Simply said, calling stomata “pores” bespeaks ignorance. Even in casual conversation, scientists (or farmers for that matter) talking about plant physiology do not typically call stomata “pores”. In a scientific essay, it sounds idiotic.
The lack of proper language is hardly limited to a single or even a few words and phrases.
It is replete throughout the essay.
Some might say that referring to stomata as pores is not actually incorrect, since a pore is a generally term for any opening in a surface, and stomata are an example of one such type of opening.
But in this same paragraph they refer to water being released by leaves as “evaporation”.
For one thing, water vapor is what is released, and the process itself is never called evaporation. It has a separate name: Transpiration.
Transpiration as a process is distinct from evaporation.
The water vapor which transpires from stomata does have to evaporate of course. It evaporates into air spaces within the plant from mesophyll cell walls.
The entire process involves water being drawn up through the plant. If vapor was simply evaporating, there would be no capillary action drawing new water into the roots and up through the xylem cells to the leaves.
Water passing into the air happens by any of several processes, examples being sublimation, evaporation, and transpiration. They are purposely defined as distinct processes. It is flat out incorrect to refer to water transpired by leaves as evaporation.
There is a separate process by which plants exude water, rather than vapor, and this process is called guttation.

This is a paper on the topic of plant physiology that is published in the pages of the National Science Foundation.
I for one am embarrassed for them.

A couple of blunders in this analysis:

1) Green plants evapo-transpire water, absorbing moisture from soils and transferring it to the atmosphere through leaves based upon factors like available soil moisture, relatively humidity, windspeeds, and direct sunlight exposure … thus plants dry out soils, and do NOT make soils hold more water.

2) Green plants also physically retard surface runoff rates, just due to the much higher “friction” of flow over that of bare soils or rocks. The “time of concentration” is the measure of the land surface’s tendency to speed or retard surface runoff flow rates, and directly controls peak runoff rates from a given watershed. The shorter the Tc (from a lightly vegetated surface) the faster the runoff collects leading to a higher peak runoff rate from the watershed. Likewise, the longer the Tc the lower the peak runoff rate from a given watershed.

Vegetation cover thus not only dries out soils but greatly slows the surface and near surface transport of rainfall runoff into streams and rivers. The “time of concentration” is what greatly affects the peak runoff rates that can lead to flooding.

Engineers take this into account in calculating watershed flood analyses. I’m a degreed and licensed civil engineer. This is what we do.

This paper is yet another example of a little knowledge – but nowhere near enough – is just enough to be dangerous.

A greening world is a world much less subject to dangerous flooding, especially flash flooding. That is why the steep terrain of desert areas as in the American southwest experience far more drastic flash floods than do the heavily vegetated lands of the eastern half of America.