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Summary

A detailed study of rainfall passage and capture in the tree canopy

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The forest canopy breaks up and captures rainfall, playing an important role in many hydrological, biogeochemical and ecological processes. Over the course of a year Forest Research collected detailed meteorological and precipitation data and characterised the canopy at two sites: an oak forest at Alice Holt and a Scots pine forest at Thetford. The team evaluated the suitability of Gash’s model – the most widely used model of canopy interception – to the short timescales required by modern ecosystem process models.

Key findings and outputs

  • Canopy characterisation: high resolution measurements used to determine the interception capabilities (throughfall and stemflow) and canopy characteristics (area indices, aerodynamic conductance and water holding capacity) of both sites
  • Parameters: estimation of the five parameters required to calibrate Gash’s rainfall interception model
  • Evaluation: the model performed well against measured data at the seasonable timescale, but it’s performance was less satisfactory for shorter timescales

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Example of hemispherical photographs for Oak (left) and Scots pine (right)

Publications

Available on request.

Funders and partners

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Part-funded by the EU Forest Focus ‘C’ scheme.

Status

2006-2007

Contacts

For details about the modelling component

Catia Arcangeli

For details of the instrumentation

Matthew Wilkinson

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