A research paper discusses the challenges and advances in understanding wood-water interactions. One of its claims is that the concept of the “fiber saturation point” (FSP) is inherently flawed because it assumes a single, consistent moisture content at which all capillary water is removed, and all cell walls are fully saturated. The authors argue that this flawed assumption undermines the reliability of FSP as a metric in wood science and propose using “maximum cell wall moisture content” as a more precise measure.
Which of the following would be most useful to know in order to evaluate the authors’ argument against the traditional concept of the FSP?
Answer: