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Forests, Man and Water
Published in J. Rose, Water and the Environment, 2017
The vegetation canopy intercepts a proportion of the incident rainfall and may also serve as a collector for water droplets which are too small to precipitate directly in the moving air and are carried horizontally. This has been termed “occult precipitation” for it will not be recorded by conventional rain gauges4 and may increase the water input to the ecosystem by 25 percent. Water on the leaves may pass on to the forest floor as throughfall, run down twigs to be concentrated as stemflow, or may be absorbed by the leaf itself. Such foliar absorption is of considerable importance to plants in climates where water is scarce,5 such is the case with the fog-collecting leaves of Welwitschia mirabilis in the Namib desert of south-west Africa.
Engineering Properties of Vegetation
Published in R.P.C. Morgan, R.J. Rickson, Slope Stabilization and Erosion Control, 2003
Some of the intercepted rainfall is stored on the leaves and stems and is later returned to the atmosphere by evaporation. The remainder of the intercepted rainfall, termed ‘temporarily intercepted throughfall’ (TIF), reaches the ground either as stemflow (i.e. that running down the stems, branches or trunks of the vegetation) or as leaf drainage.
Assessment of rainfall interception, soil moisture dynamics and seasonal headwaters in a micro-catchment of Western ghats
Published in Water Science, 2023
Stemflow is a film of water that flows over the surface of a tree stem before reaching the ground. Stemflow is measured using a semi-circular pipe wrapped around the stem of the tree which channelizes the water flowing over the tree to the container. In the process, water is evaporated from the stem and some of the small-intensity stemflow will not reach the ground surface. The sum of leaf interception loss and stemflow gives the total canopy interception loss from the GRF. The interception equation is given by