Chemistry of rainfall, throughfall and stemflow in a eucalypt forest and a pine plantation in south‐eastern Australia: 3. Stemflow and total inputs

Neighbourhood and stand structure affect stemflow generation in a heterogeneous deciduous temperate forest

“…Fully connected flow paths lead to the builtup of stable, systematic patterns of stemflow and increased funnelling ratios, relating strongly to tree properties. This agrees with previous research on stemflow generation processes: although some studies conceptualized stemflow invoking a bucket concept, where tree (André et al, 2008) or bark (Aboal et al, 1999) storage need to saturate before stemflow is initiated, a more dynamic picture is given by Herwitz (1987), Crockford et al (1996), Levia and Frost (2003) and Levia et al (2010) which fits well with our observation. Levia and Frost (2003) state that "stemflow generation can begin before the woody frame is completely wet- ted" due to preferential flow lines resulting from tree morphology or angled rain.…”

Neighbourhood and stand structure affect stemflow generation in a heterogeneous deciduous temperate forest

“…Fully connected flow paths lead to the built-up of stable, systematic patterns of stemflow and increased funnelling ratios, relating strongly to tree properties. This agrees with previous research on stemflow generation processes: Although some studies conceptualized stemflow invoking a bucket concept, where tree (André et al, 2008) or bark (Aboal et al, 1999) storage need to saturate before stemflow is initiated, a more dynamic picture is given by Herwitz (1987), Crockford et al (1996) and Levia & Frost (2003), which fits well with our observation. They say that "stemflow generation can begin before the woody frame is completely wetted" (Levia & Frost, 2003)…”

Comparing rainfall interception in plantation trials of six tropical hardwood trees and wild sugar cane Saccharum spontaneum L.

“…High intensity, short‐term storms such as those occurring within our study site generally result in low nutrient content of SF from vegetative canopies (Crockford et al ., ; Levia and Herwitz, ). Where SF is large, it is likely that the nutrient poor vertical flows may exacerbate nutrient leaching (Durocher, ), leading to the hypothesis that increased leaching of soil nutrients in S. spontaneum may negatively affect long‐term soil fertility.…”