Throughfall is the precipitation that penetrates through the canopy and reaches the soil surface by canopy drip. The amount of water retained by the canopy is termed interception (Interception = Precipitation – [Throughfall + Stemflow]).
What is throughfall and stemflow?
Throughfall is defined as the precipitation that passes directly through a canopy or is initially intercepted by aboveground vegetative surfaces and subsequently drips from the canopy, whereas stemflow is the precipitation that drains from outlying leaves and branches and is channeled to the bole (or stem) of plants.
What is interception in hydrological process?
Interception is the part of the rainfall that is intercepted by the Earth’s surface and which subsequently evaporates. In this chapter, the Earth’s surface includes everything that becomes wet after a rainfall event and that dries out soon after. It includes vegetation, soil surface, litter, and buildup surface.
What is interception in biology?
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. forest floor interception).How does infiltration work in the water cycle?
Infiltration happens when water soaks into the soil from the ground level. It moves underground and moves between the soil and rocks. Some of the water will be soaked up by roots to help plants grow. The plant’s leaves eventually release the water into the air through the plant’s pours as waste.
How do you measure Stemflow?
The most common direct measurement currently used is the bonding of bisected PVC or other plastic tubing around the circumference of the tree trunk, connected and funneled into a graduated cylinder for manual or a tipping bucket rain gauge for automatic collection.
What is Stemflow in the water cycle?
Stemflow is precipitation that travels down the surface of stems to the soil.
What does interception mean for river?
Learn about this topic in these articles: This process is termed interception and may result in little water reaching the ground because the water may be directly evaporated from plant surfaces back into the atmosphere. If precipitation reaches the ground in the form of snow, it may remain there for some time.What is Throughfall in geography?
Beneath the surface, water is transferred via throughflow, which is the movement of water through the lower soil towards rivers, and groundwater flow. … Water that has been intercepted by foliage may also be transferred, either directly as throughfall, or by running down branches and stems via stemflow.
How does interception affect the water balance of a catchment?Interception has no impact on precipitation, none on soil water storage, and so it does not change the values for evapotranspiration during the summer. The resulting interception losses, therefore, have an effect on flows only during the winter period and can be estimated only within that framework.
Article first time published onWhy is interception important in the water cycle?
Overall, we can conclude that interception has different roles in the hydrological cycle. The most important role is as a rainfall reducer, causing a significant amount of rainfall to be directly fed back to the atmosphere which is not available for infiltration.
What are the factors affecting interception?
We confirmed the factors affecting interception loss by using an interception model based on the tank model. The artificial forest simulations provide new evidence that interception loss is influenced by the PAI, rainfall intensity, saturation deficit, and wind speed.
Is interception a store or flow?
Stores include puddles, rivers, lakes (surface storage), glaciers, soil storage and groundwater storage along with water stored on vegetation (interception) following precipitation. Transfers or flows include percolation, overland flow, infiltration, stemflow, throughflow and overland flow.
What is infiltration of water?
Infiltration is the process of water entry into the soil through the earth’s surface. … The movement of water into the soil is caused by gravitation and is affected by forces of soil particles on the water. As these forces depend mostly on the soil water content, intiltration is a non-linear time-dependent process.
What is infiltration in the water cycle ks2?
Infiltration is a part of the water cycle and occurs when water moves into the ground from the surface and begins to soak into the soil and rock layers underneath. The water can make its way to the surface from the earth by rain, snow melting or in human activity such as watering.
What is infiltration explain?
Infiltration is defined as the flow of water from aboveground into the subsurface. The topic of infiltration has received a great deal of attention because of its importance to topics as widely ranging as irrigation, contaminant transport, groundwater recharge, and ecosystem viability.
What is Throughfall interception?
Throughfall is the precipitation that penetrates through the canopy and reaches the soil surface by canopy drip. The amount of water retained by the canopy is termed interception (Interception = Precipitation – [Throughfall + Stemflow]). … Interception of snow is often greater than for rainfall.
What is Stemflow geography?
Stemflow. the flow of intercepted water down the trunk or stem of a plant. Runoff/overland flow. the draining away of water from the surface of an area of land.
What is canopy drip?
On the ground, canopy drip creates areas with higher moisture content that are located in a narrow band at the edge of the plant canopy. Throughfall – describes the process of precipitation passing through the plant canopy (yellow dashed lines in Figure 8k-2).
What percent of intercepted water might Stemflow account for?
Although stemflow accounted for only 3.3% of annual precipitation, stemflow delivered a volume of water equivalent to 222% of the annual precipitation to the soil within a 10-cm radius of each tree.
What is overland flow in hydrology?
Overland flow is defined as water that flows over the land surface as either diffuse sheet flow (laminar or mixed laminar flow) or concentrated flow (turbulent flow) in rills and gullies (Ward and Robinson, 2000).
What would cause an increase in surface runoff?
Urbanization increases surface runoff, by creating more impervious surfaces such as pavement and buildings do not allow percolation of the water down through the soil to the aquifer. It is instead forced directly into streams, where erosion and siltation can be major problems, even when flooding is not.
What is surface runoff in geography?
Surface runoff – Water moves across the surface of the earth becoming a stream, tributary or river. Precipitation – An input where water is introduced to the drainage basin system. Evapotranspiration – Water vapour is evaporated from the trunk and leaves of trees and other vegetation, back into the atmosphere.
What is a drainage basin geography?
Drainage basins refer to the area of land drained by a major river and its tributaries. All rivers flow from the source (often in the mountains) to the mouth (the sea). The drainage basin is regarded as a closed system because water never leaves. Instead, it is recycled from one state to another.
What is the flow of water called?
Streamflow, or channel runoff, is the flow of water in streams, rivers, and other channels, and is a major element of the water cycle.
What are the main components of interception?
- Interception Loss.
- Throughfall.
- Stemflow.
How does interception affect flooding?
Interception can reduce the amount of rainfall reaching the ground by as much as 45% or more for some types of forests. A reduction of even half of this amount could therefore make a major contribution to flood control.
What is the rainfall interception?
Introduction. Rainfall interception is the fraction of rain that falls onto vegetation but never reaches the ground, instead evaporating from the wet canopy.
How does interception affect transpiration?
We conclude that interception mainly works as an intensifier of the local hydrological cycle during wet spells and wet seasons. On the other hand, transpiration remains active during dry spells and dry seasons and is transported over much larger distances downwind, where it can act as a significant source of moisture.
What is evaporation in water cycle?
Evaporation is the process by which water changes from a liquid to a gas or vapor. Evaporation is the primary pathway that water moves from the liquid state back into the water cycle as atmospheric water vapor.
Why does the amount of interception vary?
Interception varies with the species, its age and density of stands. About 10 to 20% of precipitation occurring in the growing season is intercepted. It is lost substantially by way of evaporation from leaves. … However, since their season is short total amount intercepted is considerably less than the forest cover.
