Vegetation impact on mean annual evapotranspiration at a global catchment scale

MC Peel; TA McMahon; BL Finlayson

Journal article

Vegetation impact on mean annual evapotranspiration at a global catchment scale

MC Peel, TA McMahon, BL Finlayson

Water Resources Research | AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION | Published : 2010

DOI: 10.1029/2009WR008233

Abstract

Research into the role of catchment vegetation within the hydrologic cycle has a long history in the hydrologic literature. Relationships between vegetation type and catchment evapotranspiration and runoff were primarily assessed through paired catchment studies during the 20th century. Results from over 200 paired catchment studies from around the world have been reported in the literature. Two constraints on utilizing the results from paired catchment studies in the wider domain have been that the catchment areas studied are generally (1) small (<10 km2) and (2) from a narrow range of climate types. The majority of reported paired catchment studies are located in the USA (∼47%) and Austral..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Murray Peel Author

Thomas McMahon Author

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

Australian Research Council Discovery grants DP0449685 and DP0773016 financially supported this work. The authors would like to thank Lionel Siriwardena for his assistance in compiling the catchment average precipitation and temperature records, David Wilson and Kristin Gardner for assistance with delineating the catchment boundaries and Francis Chiew for useful discussions. The authors appreciate the comments provided by three anonymous reviewers and associate editor Michiaki Sugita, which significantly improved this paper.