There are very few experimental studies identifying hydrological pathways within rain forest slopes. Such knowledge is, however, necessary to understand why forest disturbance affects rainfall-riverflow response and nutrient migration. This study examines flow pathways within lowland rain forest slopes comprising Udults of the Ultisol soil order. Experimentation was conducted on four SE Asian hillslope units (each 5 × × × × × 5 m in plan) in the Bukit Timah catchment (Singapore Island), and in the W8S5 catchment (Sabah, Borneo Island). The flow pathways were identified by artificial tracer experiments. We evaluated how well hydrometric calculations based on tensiometry and permeametry measurements predicted the tracer patterns.The tracer work indicated much faster subsurface flows at Bukit Timah than W8S5 for the storms studied. Some explanation of the greater subsurface waterflows at Bukit Timah in comparison to W8S5 is afforded by the less steep moisture release curves which maintain hydraulic conductivity as the soil dries. Vertical flow of the tracer through the upper 1 m of soil predominated (> > > > >90 per cent of percolation) in the Bukit Timah slopes. In some contrast, a major component (approximately 60 per cent) of the tracer percolation was directed laterally within the W8S5 slopes. The flow vectors calculated using the hydrometric methods did, however, grossly under-estimate the degree of lateral deflection of waterflow generated at W8S5 and to a lesser extent over-estimated it at Bukit Timah. In part, these errors may relate to the inability of traditional hydrometric techniques to fully characterize the effect of the large and small 'natural soil pipes' present within both catchments. In conclusion, the study indicates that marked variations in flow vectors exist within the Udult great group of SE Asian soils and hydrometric calculations may be poor predictors of these dominant pathways.

Abstract:New methods for obtaining and quantifying spatially distributed subsurface moisture are a high research priority in process hydrology. We use simple linear regression analyses to compare terrain electrical conductivity measurements (EC) derived from multiple electromagnetic induction (EMI) frequencies to a distributed grid of water-table depth and soil-moisture measurements in a highly instrumented 50 by 50 m hillslope in Putnam County, New York. Two null hypotheses were tested: H0 1 , there is no relationship between water table depth and EC; H0 2 , there is no relationship between soil moisture levels and EC. We reject both these hypotheses. Regression analysis indicates that EC measurements from the low frequency EM31 meter with a vertical dipole orientation could explain over 80% of the variation in water-table depth across the test hillslope. Despite zeroing and sensitivity problems encountered with the high frequency EM38, EC measurements could explain over 70% of the gravimetrically determined soil-moisture variance. The use of simple moisture retrieval algorithms, which combined EC measurements from the EM31 and EM38 meters in both their vertical and horizontal orientations, helped increase the r 2 coefficients slightly. This first hillslope hydrological analysis of EMI technology in this way suggests that it may be a promising method for the collection of a large number of distributed soilwater and groundwater depth measurements with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

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