Growing season water balance of an inner alpine Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) forest

doi:10.3832/ifor2626-011

Growing season water balance of an inner alpine Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) forest

Gerhard Wieser⁽¹⁾ , Andreas Gruber⁽²⁾, Walter Oberhuber⁽²⁾

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, Volume 11, Issue 4, Pages 469-475 (2018)
doi: https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor2626-011
Published: Jul 02, 2018 - Copyright © 2018 SISEF

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We estimated components of the water cycle of a 150-year-old Pinus sylvestris forest in an inner Alpine dry valley of the Tyrol, Austria throughout five growing seasons. Forest canopy transpiration (T_C) was measured by sap flow measurements scaled to the stand canopy level. Estimates of understory transpiration and forest floor evaporation (ET_U) were derived from the soil water budget method, while interception (I) was modelled. Growing season cumulative evapotranspiration (ET = T_C + ET_U + I) varied between 256 and 322 mm or 51 to 79% of the growing season precipitation. The contribution of T_C, ET_U, and I to ET were 33, 40 and 27% respectively. Although these values of each layer (evapo)-transpiration are in good agreement with studies carried out in other European Scots pine forests, our estimated growing season total forest water use (T_tot = T_c + ET_u) of 200-244 mm is at the lower end of values reported for coniferous forest ecosystems, and thus reflects an adaptation to the low shallow soil water availability. We conclude that Scots pine forests in inner alpine dry valleys are able to cope with high evaporative demand, even when shallow soil water availability is limited.

Keywords

Forest Water Balance, Scots Pine, Dry Inner Alpine Valley, Evapotranspiration, Interception, Runoff

Authors’ address

(1)

Department of Alpine Timberline Ecophysiology, Federal Research and Training Centre for Forests, Natural Hazards and Landscape (BFW), Rennweg 1, A-6020 Innsbruck (Austria)

(2)

Department of Botany, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck, Sternwartestraße15, A-6020 Innsbruck (Austria)

Corresponding author

Gerhard Wieser
gerhard.wieser@uibk.ac.at

Citation

Wieser G, Gruber A, Oberhuber W (2018). Growing season water balance of an inner alpine Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) forest. iForest 11: 469-475. - doi: 10.3832/ifor2626-011

Academic Editor

Emanuele Lingua

Paper history

Received: Sep 06, 2017
Accepted: May 07, 2018

First online: Jul 02, 2018
Publication Date: Aug 31, 2018
Publication Time: 1.87 months

Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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