Virtual Special Issue “Advances in forest hydrology in the light of land use change and disturbances”

Penna, Daniele; Hopp, Luisa; Asano, Yuko; Thompson, Sally

doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126788

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 36 publications

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“…The combination of climate and structural controls at the catchment scale can generate a diversity of flow responses for each rainfall event. For water resource management, it is important to understand the interplay between these processes and water fluxes within and out of the system, including the effects of land‐use change, climate variability, and change (Penna et al, 2021; Tetzlaff et al, 2008; Zehe et al, 2007). This issue is particularly relevant in Southeast Brazil, given the region's vulnerability to recent droughts (Domingues & da Rocha, 2022), increasing land‐use/cover changes, such as deforestation, afforestation, urbanization, crop rotation, and pasture management (Chagas & Chaffe, 2018), increasing population growth and water demand (He et al, 2021), and the risk of climate change (Domingues et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hydrological response of a headwater catchment in Southeast Brazil—Threshold patterns of stormflow response

Chittolina

Rocha

Domingues

et al. 2023

Hydrological Processes

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Headwater catchments are essential water sources for sustaining low flow in downstream rivers. The montane region of Serra da Mantiqueira in Southeast Brazil is the largest water supplier for the densely populated area of São Paulo, where we investigated the hydrological response of a subtropical catchment and four of its sub‐catchments. We discussed the relationships between rainfall, streamflow, baseflow, stormflow, soil moisture, and water table depth using high‐frequency field observations over 4 years. Baseflow accounted for most of the streamflow during the dry season and for half of streamflow in the wet season. In contrast, the variations in soil moisture were dampened, with increases in the early wet season preceding the increase in streamflow and decreases in the late wet season following the decrease in streamflow. The mean runoff coefficient and baseflow index varied from 23% to 37% and from 62% to 75% across the catchments, respectively. At the event scale, all catchments had a pronounced threshold behaviour, where stormflow increased sharply when event precipitation reached ≃10 mm, soil moisture reached ≃51% and water table depth decreased to ≃135 cm. The event stormflow coefficient was highly variable, with a maximum of 25%. The temporally integrated stormflow coefficient was low for conditions below a soil moisture threshold (≃3%–10%) and high above a soil moisture threshold (≃8%–15%). Our estimates of flows and threshold behaviours were consistent across the various study catchments, improving our understanding of runoff generation at a catchment scale. This information should help improve the management of water resources focused on water and food security in a context of climate change.

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