The woody crown network model incorporates maximum height

We determined the decomposition, topology, and properties of the woody crown network (WCN) in tree species growing under semiarid and rainy climates in Caatinga and Cerrado vegetations. Nodes in WCN were branching regions, and connectors were the woody axes networking nodes or emerging from them. Decomposition and topology combinations output new WCN properties: laterality, sharing, basitony, and potential topological plasticity. All new properties were higher in Caatinga than Cerrado, especially in large WCN bearing more than 600 nodes. Evergreen trees of Cerrado and Caatinga shortened the distance from initial to final nodes by high basitony, facilitating water access to the final nodes and their annexed organs. The superior number of nodes found in Cerrado's evergreen trees and the Caatinga trees intensified the hydraulic segmentation and vulnerability segmentation, edifying suitable WCN for working under more intense water stress. Laterality, basitony, sharing, and potential topological plasticity uncovered the space-filling disparity strategies between deciduous and evergreen trees in the same sensu stricto Cerrado area. The reduced maximum WCN height with increasing water shortage from tall to shrubby Caatinga physiognomies appears associated with high basitony and laterality. The same possibly happens across Cerrado's physiognomies from tall Cerradão to grassland campo limpo with developing water, nutritional and fire-pruning stresses. The WCN model showed how the crown architecture blueprint could be modulated by eight entangle properties according to the intensity of multiple ambient pressures.