HR: 09:45h
AN: H51J-08    [Abstracts]
TI: Overland Flow in Forests: Not Seeing the Soil for the Trees
AU: * Elsenbeer, H
EM: helmut.elsenbeer@uni-potsdam.de
AF: University of Potsdam Institue of Geoecology, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, Potsdam, 14476, Germany
AB: The regional geography approach to forest hydrology and a historical focus of hydrologic process research on temperate forests has resulted in an uncritical identification unsupported by global data of forests in general with temperate forests regarding runoff generation. Overland flow, in particular, a flowpath considered a rare occurrence in temperate forests, has become all but incompatible with the term "forest", a few admissible (e.g. "localised") exception notwithstanding. While this conclusion - "forest, therefore no overland flow" - may be dismissed as a case of induction gone awry, it has had, in the sense of a self-fulfilling prophecy, an insidious effect on field methods: why bother to detect or monitor overland flow in an ecosystem that almost by definition precludes its existence? This presentation therefore strives 1) to separate hydrologically relevant soilscape properties from methodological inadequacies in an attempt to re-assess the global relevance of overland flow in forests, and 2) to explore to which extent these methodological inadequacies derive from an outdated understanding of overland flow-generating mechanisms in forests. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
DE: 1850 Overland flow
DE: 1865 Soils (0486)
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting