Seasonal Response of Catchment Runoff to Forest Age
Abstract
The water use of native Australian forests is known to be relatively low during the first few years of the forests growth, peak between 20 and 30 years of age and then gradually reduce as the trees continue to mature. This effect, described by the “Kuczera curve”, is well understood to change the annual volume of runoff from forested catchments. However, there is far less information on the within-year impacts on streamflow resulting from changes in forest age. This paper provides separate seasonal curves for the variation in runoff with forest age. The seasonal curves were derived using simulation experiments with the Macaque model, which is a physically based distributed model of plant water use developed for research on the water balance of forested catchments. The seasonal curves are applied in this paper to estimate the variations in seasonal runoff from catchments in north eastern Victoria that were affected by the 2003 bushfires.
Authors
Phillip Jordan, Rachel Murphy, Peter Hill & Rory Nathan