Forest floor interception
[Gerrits, A.M.J. and Savenije, H.H.G. 2011. (invited) Forest floor interception. In Levia, D.F., Carlyle-Moses, D.E. and Tanaka, T. (Eds.), Forest Hydrology and Biogeochemistry: Synthesis of Past Research and Future Directions. Ecological Studies Series, No. 216, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany] is the part of the (net) precipitation or
throughfall
In Hydrology, throughfall is the process which describes how wet leaves shed excess water onto the ground surface. These drops have greater erosive power because they are heavier than rain drops. Furthermore, where there is a high canopy, falling ...
that is temporarily stored in the top layer of the
forest floor
The forest floor, also called detritus, duff and the O horizon, is one of the most distinctive features of a forest ecosystem. It mainly consists of shed vegetative parts, such as leaves, branches, bark, and stems, existing in various stage ...
and successively evaporated within a few hours or days during and after the rainfall event. The
forest floor
The forest floor, also called detritus, duff and the O horizon, is one of the most distinctive features of a forest ecosystem. It mainly consists of shed vegetative parts, such as leaves, branches, bark, and stems, existing in various stage ...
can consist of bare soil, short vegetation (like grasses, mosses, creeping vegetation, etc.) or litter (i.e. leaves, twigs, or small branches).
See also
*
Interception (water)
Interception refers to precipitation that does not reach the soil, but is instead intercepted by the leaves, branches of plants and the forest floor. It occurs in the canopy (i.e. canopy interception), and in the forest floor or litter layer (i.e. ...
*
Canopy interception
Canopy interception is the rainfall that is intercepted by the canopy of a tree and successively evaporates from the leaves. Precipitation that is not intercepted will fall as throughfall or stemflow on the forest floor.
Many methods exist to m ...
Further reading
* Gerrits, A.M.J., Savenije, H.H.G., Hoffmann, L. and Pfister, L. (2007)
New technique to measure forest floor interception – an application in a beech forest in Luxembourg Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 11, 695–701.
References
Hydrology
Forest ecology
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