Does where you plant trees make a difference in hydrologic response?

Abstract

Riparian zones are considered to be a good way of reducing water flow and sediment losses to streams, but is planting trees further away from the stream bank just as effective? Here we have used a combination of analytical models and numerical models to estimate the likely effects of the positioning of trees in a catchment on the hydrologic response. An analytical model of a planar slope was used extended in a piecewise manner to determine the effect of varying roughness of a section of the slope on runoff depth, velocity and quantity. This was compared to a numerical solution of the full flow equation on a slope. Results show that the analytical solution predicts a larger runoff depth than ..