Combining forest growth and hydrologic modelling to examine relative effects of climate and land use change: A case study in the Delegate River catchment, southeastern Australia

Abstract

Variability and changes in climate affects vegetation function and hydrological processes within the catchments. Water use of different land uses depends on factors including climate, soil, landscape position, species and management, and is closely linked with vegetation growth. There is increasing interest to predict the availability of water to downstream users, yet many modelling approaches simulating large scale climate-hydrology interactions do not explicitly take vegetation response into account. As evapotranspiration is a major component of the water balance, vegetation processes should be included when modelling climate-water relationships. We parameterise and validate a forest growt..