Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Wildfire, insect infestation, disease and commercial logging affect progressively larger areas of the world's forests, and resulting effects coupled with global climate change have created an increasing need for accurate tools with which hydrologists, foresters and watershed managers can evaluate disturbance and climate-related impacts on catchment water yield and ecosystem functions. To date, there has been no research examining how different disturbance types affect the forest floor and its water balance components, information that has important implications concerning wildfire potential. Further, there have been no studies examining the interactions between the spatial and temporal variability of understorey rainfall and the spatial and temporal distribution of soil moisture contents under different disturbance and regrowth scenarios. My proposed research program will thus be the first to simultaneously study the magnitudes of canopy and forest floor water balances components, as well as rooting zone water contents under disturbance and regeneration conditions. During the course of this study, new, more appropriate methods of determining the water storage capacity of forest canopies and the evaporation rates of water held in those canopies during rainfall events will also be derived, with a focus on developing approaches to better estimate these values in other forests. Process-based information as well as canopy and forest floor hydrologic simulation tools relevant to watershed-scale modelling developed through this research program will better prepare hydrologists, foresters, and watershed managers to assess the impacts of disturbance, re-growth and climate change on water yield and forest productivity, and help policy-makers to develop watershed management guidelines for post-disturbance landscapes across Canada and the world.