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Do forest areas influence rainfall regime?
Book chapter   Open access   Peer reviewed

Do forest areas influence rainfall regime?

Giorgio Matteucci, Jerome K Vanclay and Javier Martin-Vide
Water for forests and people in the Mediterranean region: a challenging balance, pp.32-36
What science can tell us, 1, European Forest Institute
2011
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Do forest areas influence rainfall regime?View
Published (Version of record) See page 32-36 Open

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Abstract

At local to landscape scales, the role of forests in affecting microclimatic conditions, in regulating flows and availability of water downstream and in preventing erosion is generally well established. When precipitation is considered, people living in areas with large or partial forest land cover have the common believe that forests influence the local rainfall regimes. At the global scale, annual precipitation over the land is about 110,000 km3 , or 110 × 1015 kgH2O, while evaporation and transpiration processes generate about 70 × 1015 kg of water. Terrestrial plants add 32 × 1015 kg of water vapour to the atmosphere annually, approximately two times the calculated water content of the atmosphere. This huge global flux of water vapour passes through microscopic pores on the surface of leaves (stomata) and represents a fundamental ecosystem service, contributing to the global water cycle and climate regulation by cloud formation (see sections 1.1, 1.4, 3.1). Hence, forests sustain the hydrological cycle through evapotranspiration, which cools the climate through feedback with clouds and precipitation; large-scale model simulations have routinely demonstrated the biogeophysical regulation of climate by vegetation through albedo (reflectivity), turbulent fluxes and effects on the hydrological cycle.

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