Climate Change Impact on the Forest Hydrological Cycle

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Biosphere/Hydrosphere/Land–Atmosphere Interactions".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2022) | Viewed by 7473

Special Issue Editors

Water Resources Department, Engineering School, Federal University of Lavras, Lavras 37200-000, MG, Brazil
Interests: hydrological modeling; water resources management; environmental science; soil physics; hydrology; environmental impact assessment; water balance; climate change impacts on hydrology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
College of Water Resource and Hydropower, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China
Interests: hydropedology; hillslope hydrology; climate change; soil moisture; ecohydrology; remote sensing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Hubei Province Key Laboratory for Geographical Process Analyzing & Simulation, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China
Interests: hydropedology; soil moisture; preferential flow; hillslope hydrology
State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Silviculture, College of Forestry and Biotechnology, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou 311300, China
Interests: ecohydrology; forest hydrology; biomass modeling; rainfall redistribution; soil moisture; stemflow dynamics
Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China
Interests: soil structure; soil macropores; soil quality; water moisture; preferential flow; hillslope hydrology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Forests have provided strategic ecosystem services worldwide. They play a key role in mitigating climate change’s impacts. In addition to their well-known ecological service as a sinkhole of carbon, forests are also important to the water dynamics in the landscape and in the hydrosphere. Their role varies from cloud formation to groundwater recharging and they have a special role to play in our lives. Thus, forests must be carefully studied, taking into account different points of view related to climate change. This Special Issue in Atmosphere aims to publish recent advances in climatology with impacts on the hydrological cycle, highlighting the relevance of the forest in the physical, chemical, and biological processes/cycling of climate change. In particular we are seeking studies that uncover new insights regarding how the hydrological cycle in forest ecosystems can potentially be impacted by a warmer atmosphere and different precipitation and evapotranspiration patterns over both time and space. Further, studies such as the long-term interception observation; hydro-climatological modeling; forest water balance modelling and observation under severe meteorological conditions; biogeochemistry modeling and field observations; photosynthesis and biomass production under severe meteorological conditions; new models for canopy rainfall interception that are able to simulate different atmospheric and meteorological conditions; strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the hydrology and biogeochemistry balances in different forest ecosystems; and energy, evapotranspiration, and water balance in forests based on Eddy covariances and Bowen ratios, among other possibilities, are welcome in this Special Issue.

Dr. Carlos Rogério Mello
Prof. Dr. Li Guo
Prof. Dr. Muxing Liu
Dr. Chuan Yuan
Dr. Junfang Cui
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • Hydro-climatology of the forest ecosystems
  • Water and biogeochemistry balance in forests
  • Interception models
  • Forest hydrology
  • Evapotranspiration in forests in a changing climate
  • Long-term field observation of water balance in forests

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 2080 KiB  
Article
Climate Elasticity of Annual Runoff: Observation in Fifteen Forested Catchments on a Latitudinal Gradient in East Asia
by Nobuaki Tanaka, Yen-Jen Lai, Sangjun Im, Maznah Binti Mahali, Venus Tuankrua, Koichiro Kuraji, Fera Cleophas, Chatchai Tantasirin, Mie Gomyo, Chun-Wei Tseng, Katsushige Shiraki, Norifumi Hotta, Yuko Asano, Hiroki Inoue and Anand Nainar
Atmosphere 2023, 14(4), 629; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14040629 - 26 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1472
Abstract
In order to overview the impact of climate change on runoff from forested catchments over Asian countries, we collected water balance data from fifteen long-term catchment monitoring stations (total monitoring period 1975–2018, not continuous), spanning from Sabah, Malaysia (our southernmost site), to Hokkaido, [...] Read more.
In order to overview the impact of climate change on runoff from forested catchments over Asian countries, we collected water balance data from fifteen long-term catchment monitoring stations (total monitoring period 1975–2018, not continuous), spanning from Sabah, Malaysia (our southernmost site), to Hokkaido, Japan (our northernmost site). We then employed an elasticity analysis to the dataset to examine how the annual runoff from each catchment responded to inter-annual fluctuations in annual rainfall and annual mean air temperature. As a result, we found that (1) the annual runoff was sensitive to annual rainfall for all the catchments examined. In addition, (2) the annual runoff from seven of the fifteen catchments was sensitive to inter-annual changes in the mean air temperature, which was likely due to changes in forest evapotranspiration. Three catchments, however, exhibited an increased runoff in a hot year. Finally, (3) the annual rainfall from the previous year (carry-over soil moisture) was important in explaining the variation in annual runoff in two tropical montane forest catchments. This study may serve as one of the pilot studies toward a comprehensive understanding of the climate elasticity of runoff in countries over Asia, because the examined catchments are unevenly and sparsely distributed over the area. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change Impact on the Forest Hydrological Cycle)
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15 pages, 2483 KiB  
Article
Resilience of Pinus durangensis Martínez in Extreme Drought Periods: Vertical and Horizontal Response of Tree Rings
by Citlalli Cabral-Alemán, José Villanueva-Díaz, Gerónimo Quiñonez-Barraza and Armando Gómez-Guerrero
Atmosphere 2023, 14(1), 43; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14010043 - 26 Dec 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1195
Abstract
Extreme drought events reduce the productivity of forest ecosystems. One approach for estimating the effects of drought on forests is by assessing their resilience. The objective of this study was to estimate resilience rates at different heights along the tree stem of Pinus [...] Read more.
Extreme drought events reduce the productivity of forest ecosystems. One approach for estimating the effects of drought on forests is by assessing their resilience. The objective of this study was to estimate resilience rates at different heights along the tree stem of Pinus durangensis Martínez. The radial growth of 200 cross sections extracted at four heights of tree stems (0.07–0.15, 1.3, 6.3, and 11.0–12.0 m) was analyzed and subsequently transformed into ring-width indices (RWI). These indices were correlated with the Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index on a six-month time scale (accumulated drought of six months in the period February–May; SPEI06FM). Seven extreme drought events were identified (1890, 1902, 1956, 1974, 1999, 2006, 2011), and radial growth before, during, and after each event was determined. Based on ring-width index values, resistance, recovery, and resilience indices were calculated. The results indicated a significant correlation (p ≤ 0.05) between annual radial increment and climate indices along the stem (0.56 to 0.80). Climatic sensitivity was higher in the lower part of the stem, with mean sensitivity (MS) and expressed population signal (EPS) values of 0.38 and 0.97, respectively. Resistance index values ranged from 0.44 to 0.76 and were better expressed in higher sections of the stem. Resilience indices changed over time. Regardless of the height of the tree stem, the latest extreme drought events (1999, 2006, and 2011) have led to a lower resilience of trees, indicating that their recovery capacity has decreased. Therefore, forestry practices in the study area may consider managing tree density as a strategy to regulate the stress in competition and to increase the tolerance of trees to drought. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change Impact on the Forest Hydrological Cycle)
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19 pages, 4312 KiB  
Article
Evapotranspiration under Drought Conditions: The Case Study of a Seasonally Dry Atlantic Forest
by Daniel Guauque-Mellado, André Rodrigues, Marcela Terra, Vanessa Mantovani, Silvia Yanagi, Adriano Diotto and Carlos de Mello
Atmosphere 2022, 13(6), 871; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13060871 - 26 May 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1807
Abstract
Information on evapotranspiration (ET) has the potential to clarify drought’s effects on the water balance of natural ecosystems. Here, we use a 6-year dataset to present daily ET trends under different drought conditions in a seasonally dry Atlantic Forest in southeast Brazil as [...] Read more.
Information on evapotranspiration (ET) has the potential to clarify drought’s effects on the water balance of natural ecosystems. Here, we use a 6-year dataset to present daily ET trends under different drought conditions in a seasonally dry Atlantic Forest in southeast Brazil as well as environmental and biophysical controls. Generalized linear models (GLMs) were applied to highlight the main controls on ET. Significant differences for ET were not found under different drought conditions (near normal, moderately dry, and severely dry). ET responded positively to net radiation (Rn), bulk surface (gs), and aerodynamic (ga) conductance. Drought severity and soil water storage (SWS) did not significantly affect ET. We attributed the regularization of ET to (i) the stability in the SWS observed in the study site (dystrophic red latosol); (ii) the tree species’ adaptations to cope with water stress; (iii) the alternation between droughts and near-normal conditions (which have increased the water in the system on an annual basis); and (iv) the monthly variations in water inputs within the hydrological years. Finally, our study sheds light on the ecosystem characteristics that may represent sources of resilience when facing the droughts predicted in climate change scenarios. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change Impact on the Forest Hydrological Cycle)
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17 pages, 4477 KiB  
Article
Improving the Estimation of Throughfall Amounts in Primeval Forests along an Elevation Gradient on Mountain Gongga, Southwest China
by Ruxin Yang, Genxu Wang, Junfang Cui, Li Guo, Fei Wang and Xiangyu Tang
Atmosphere 2022, 13(4), 639; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13040639 - 18 Apr 2022
Viewed by 1882
Abstract
Differences in rainfall partition into throughfall among different primeval forests distributed along an altitude gradient are inadequately investigated and understood. Through continuous and automatic monitoring of natural rainfall and throughfall along an elevation gradient on Mountain Gongga, we examined the response of throughfall [...] Read more.
Differences in rainfall partition into throughfall among different primeval forests distributed along an altitude gradient are inadequately investigated and understood. Through continuous and automatic monitoring of natural rainfall and throughfall along an elevation gradient on Mountain Gongga, we examined the response of throughfall to various rainfall patterns in the broadleaved forest (BF), broadleaved-coniferous mixed forest (MF), and coniferous forest (CF) across individual rain events from May to October in 2019. A series of linear models that estimate throughfall amount were obtained and compared. Results showed that throughfall was jointly controlled by rainfall characteristics (including amount, duration, average, and peak intensity) and leaf area index (LAI). Rainfall amount was the primary control for throughfall amount. The models with all rainfall parameters and LAI as variables did not markedly outperform (R2 enhancement by 0–0.02) the simple linear models with rainfall amount as the only variable; therefore, the latter are recommended due to simplicity and easiness of use. Although the correlation of throughfall with LAI was less prominent compared to rainfall parameters, LAI showed a significant positive linear correlation (p < 0.05) with the estimated rainfall amount threshold (the rainfall required to saturate the canopy) by the single-variable linear models at the monthly scale. Over the study period, penetration proportions of rainfall in BF, MF, and CF were 83%, 75%, and 80%, respectively. The rainfall amount threshold in CF (0.70 mm) was less than those in BF (0.80 mm) and MF (0.92 mm). Rain events of higher intensity exhibited a higher mean penetration proportion than lower intensity rain events. The use of single-variable linear models developed here, despite some overestimations of throughfall amount, could lead to an overall satisfactory estimation of rainfall redistribution in mountainous areas. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change Impact on the Forest Hydrological Cycle)
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