Interception, throughfall and stemflow partition in drylands: Global synthesis and meta-analysis

MAGLIANO, PATRICIO N.; WHITWORTH-HULSE, JUAN I.; BALDI, GERMÁN

JOURNAL OF HYDROLOGY

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Año: 2019 vol. 568 p. 638 - 645

0022-1694

The net amount of rainfall entering into the soil and its spatial distribution at the patch scale are key drivers of ecosystem processes in drylands. The spatial distribution of water is mainly controlled by vegetation canopy which determines the partitioning of rainfall into interception, throughfall and stemflow. In this paper, we synthesized and analyzed rainfall partitioning for 68 woody plant species in drylands (delimited by a rainfall-potential evapotranspiration ratio 0.05 for all cases). Shrubs were more abundant towards the dry edge of the rainfall gradient (145?500 mm year−1), while trees were more abundant towards the subhumid edge (500?805 mm year−1). These results suggested that higher stemflow found towards the dry edge of the rainfall gradient was caused by the higher abundance of shrubs, which generated more stemflow than trees. Our findings highlighted the ecohydrological key role of vegetation life form and rainfall inputs affecting the amount of water entering into the soil and its spatial distribution in drylands.