Partitioning growing season water balance within a forested boreal catchment using sap flux, eddy covariance, and a process-based model
Although it is well known that evapotranspiration (ET) represents an important water flux at local to global scales, few studies have quantified the magnitude and relative importance of ET and its individual flux components in high-latitude forests. In this study, we combined empirical sapflux, throughfall, and eddy-covariance measurements with estimates from a process-based model to partition the water balance in a northern boreal forested catchment. This study was conducted within the Krycklan catchment, which has a rich history of hydrological measurements, thereby providing us with the unique opportunity to compare the absolute and relative magnitudes of ET and its flux components to other water balance components. During the growing season, ET represented ca. 85% of the incoming precipitation. Both empirical results and model estimates suggested that tree transpiration (T) and evaporation of intercepted water from the tree canopy (IC) represented 43% and 31% of ET, respectively, and together were equal to ca. 70%of incoming precipitation during the growing season. Understory evapotranspiration (ETu) was less important than T and IC during most of the study period, except for late autumn, when ETu was the largest ET flux component. Overall, our study highlights the importance of trees in regulating the water cycle of boreal catchments, implying that forest management impacts on stand structure as well as climate change effects on tree growth are likely to have large cascading effects on the way water moves through these forested landscapes.
Duke Scholars
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Related Subject Headings
- Environmental Engineering
- 4013 Geomatic engineering
- 3709 Physical geography and environmental geoscience
- 3707 Hydrology
- 0907 Environmental Engineering
- 0905 Civil Engineering
- 0406 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Environmental Engineering
- 4013 Geomatic engineering
- 3709 Physical geography and environmental geoscience
- 3707 Hydrology
- 0907 Environmental Engineering
- 0905 Civil Engineering
- 0406 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience