Abstract
Understanding spatio-temporal patterns in rainfall received beneath tropical forest is required for eco- hydrological modelling of soil-water status, river behaviour, soil erosion, nutrient loss and wet-canopy evaporation. As selectivelogging of tropical forest leaves a very complex mosaic of canopy types, it is likely to add to the spatio-temporal complexity of this sub-canopy or net precipitation. As a precursor to addressing this problem, the analysis presented here will examine the two dominant biophysical controls on sub-canopy precipitation. These controls are: (a) the spatial and temporal patterns in above-canopy or gross rainfall, and (b) the rate of wet-canopy evaporation associated with each type of canopy structure created by selective-forestry. For this study, over 400 raingauges were installed within a 10 km2 area of lowland dipterocarp forest affected by selective-forestry some 9-years prior to this work. Gauges were located beneath various canopy types and within large openings. The spatial distribution of gross rainfall (monitored within the openings) was modelled using variography, while the effects of different canopy types on sub-canopy preciptation was analysed by comparing 6-month totals. The temporal distribution of gross rainfall over an 11-year record collected at the same site (Danum Valley Field Centre) was modelled with Data-Based-Mechanistic (DBM) approaches. These DBM approaches were also applied to the rainfall time-series of the two adjacent meteorological stations; all three gauges being contained within a 5000 km2 region of Eastern Sabah in Malaysian Borneo.
Strong diurnal modulation was apparent within gross rainfall for the inland rainforest site, with a distribution consistent with a dominance of local convective rain cells. A similarly strong cycle coincident with the periodicity of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was present within all of the region’s rainfall records, though marked differences in annual and intra-annual seasonality were apparent. The preliminary variogram modelling indicated that a deterministic drift was present within the local-scale gross rainfall data, probably related to local topographic effects. Notwithstanding the need to remove this drift, the work indicated that spatial models of gross rainfall could be identified and used to interpret similar models of net-precipitation. During the ENSO drought-period monitored, the lowland dipterocarp forest allowed 91% of the gross rainfall to reach the ground as throughfall. These rates were, however, reduced to between 80%–86% beneath representative plots of moderately impacted to creeper-covered, highly damaged patches of forest.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Asdak, C. Jarvis, P. G., van Gardingen, R. & Fraser, A. 1998. Rainfall interception loss in unlogged and logged forest areas of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. J. Hydrol. 206: 237–244.
Barry, R. G. & Chorley, R. J. 1982. Atmosphere, weather and climate. Fourth Edition. Methuen, London.
Bellehumeur, C., Legendre, P. & Marcotte, D. 1997. Variance and spatial scales in tropical rain forest: Changing the size of sampling units. Plant Ecol. 130: 89–98.
Bidin, K. in preparation. Spatial and temporal structure of gross and net precipitation within a selectively-logged forest catchment. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Lancaster, Lancaster.
Borga, M. & Vizzaccaro, A. 1997. On the interpolation of hydrologic variables: formal equivalence of multiquadratic surface fitting and kriging. J. Hydrol. 195: 160–171.
Brooks, S. M. & Spencer, T. 1995. Vegetation modification of rainfall characteristics: implications for rainfall erosivity following logging in Sabah, Malaysia. J. Trop. For. Sci. 7: 435–446.
Bruijnzeel, L. A., Waterloo, M. J., Proctor, J., Kuiters, A. T. & Kotterink, B. 1993. Hydrological observations in montane rain forests on Gunung Silam, Sabah, Malaysia, with special reference to the ‘Massenerhebung’ effect. J. Ecol. 81: 145–167.
Calder, I. R. 2001 Canopy processes: implications for transpiration, interception and splash induced erosion, ultimately for forest management and water resources. Plant Ecol. 153: 203–214 (this volume).
Chappell, N. A., Franks, S. W. & Larenus, J. 1998. Multi-scale permeability estimation for a tropical catchment. Hydrol. Process. 12: 1507–1523.
Chappell, N. A., McKenna, R, Bidin, K, Douglas, I, & Walsh, R. R. D. 1999a. Parsimonious modelling of water and suspended-sediment flux from nested-catchments affected by selective tropical forestry. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B 354: 1831–1846.
Chappell, N. A., Ternan, J. L. & Bidin, K. 1999b. Correlation of physicochemical properties and sub-erosional landforms with aggregate stability variations in a tropical Ultisol disturbed by forestry operations. Soil Tillage Res. 50: 55–71.
Conway, S. 1982. Logging practices. Miller Freeman Publications, San Francisco.
Dingman, S. L. 1994. Physical hydrology. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs.
Discenza, A. R., Whittaker, J., & Chappell, N. A., in preparation. Stochastic modelling of tropical rainfall occurrence processes at daily and hourly time-scales.
Douglas, I., Bidin, K., Balamurgam, G., Chappell, N. A., Walsh, R. P. D., Greer, T. & Sinun, W. 1992. The role of extreme events in the impacts of selective tropical forestry on erosion during harvesting and recovery phases at Danum Valley, Sabah. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B 354: 1749–1761.
Douglas, I., Spencer, T., Greer, T., Bidin, K., Sinun, W. & Wong, W. M., 1992. The impact of selective commercial logging on stream hydrology, chemistry and sediment loads in the Ulu Segama Rain Forest, Sabah. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B 335: 397–406.
Eschenbach, C., Glauner, R., Klein, M. and Kappen, I. 1998. Photosynthesis rates of selected tree species in lowland dipterocarp rain forest of Sabah, Malaysia. Trees-Struct. Funct. 12: 356–365.
Goodrich, D. C., Faurès, J-M., Woolhiser, D. A., Lane, L. J. & Sorooshian, S. 1995. Measurement and analysis of small-scale convective storm rainfall variability. J. Hydrol. 173: 283–308.
Henderson-Sellers, A., Dickinson, R. E., Durbridge, T. B., Kennedy, R. J., McGuffe, K. & Pitman, A. J. 1993. Tropical deforestation: modelling local to regional-scale climatic change. J. Geophys. Res. 98 (D4): 7289–7315.
Herwitz, S. R. 1985. Interception storage capacities of tropical rain forest trees. J. Hydrol. 77: 237–252.
Houze, R. A., Geotis, S. G., Marks, Jr., F. D. & West A. K. 1981. Winter monsoon convection in the vicinity of north Borneo. Part 1: structure and time variation of the clouds and precipitation. Mon. Weather Rev. 109: 1595–1614.
Johnson R. H. & Priegnitz, D. L. 1981. Winter monsoon convection in the vicinity of North Borneo. Part II. Effects on large-scale fields. Mon. Weather Rev. 109: 1619–1632.
Journel, A. G. & Huijbregts, C. J. 1978. Mining geostatistics. Academic Press, New York.
Kasran, B. 1989. Rainfall interception in dipterocarp forest of Penninsular Malaysia. Pp. 1–15. In: Regional seminar on tropical forest hydrology. Forest Research Institute of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.
Kripalani, R. H. & Kulkarni, A. 1997. Rainfall variability over South-east Asia - connections with Indian monsoon and ENSO extremes: new perspectives. Int. J. Clim. 17: 1155–1168.
Kripalani, R. H. & Kulkarni, A. 1998. The relationship between some large-scale atmospheric parameters and rainfall over Southeast Asia: a comparison with features in India. Theor. Appl. Clim. 59: 1–11.
Lebel, T. and Le Barbé, L. 1997. Rainfall monitoring during HAPEX-Sahel. 2. Point and areal estimation at the event and seasonal scales. J. Hydrol. 188: 97–122.
Lloyd, C. R. 1990. The temporal distribution of Amazonian rainfall and its implications for forest interception. Quart. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc. 116: 1487–1494.
Lloyd, C. R. Gash, J. H. C., Shuttleworth, W. J. & Marques Filho, A de O. 1988. The measurement and modelling of rainfall interception by Amazonian rain forest. J. Hydrol. 43: 277–294.
Lyons, W. F. & Bonell, M. 1992. Daily mesoscale rainfall in the tropical wet/dry climate of the Townsville area, north-eastern Queensland during the 1988/89 wet season: synoptic scale airflow considerations. Int. J. Clim. 12: 655–684.
Madden, R. A. & Julian, P. R. 1972. Description of global scale circulation cells in the tropics with a 40–50 day period. J. Atmos. Sci. 29: 1109–1123.
Martin-Smith, K. 1999. Biodiversity patterns of tropical freshwater fish following selective timber extraction: a case study from Sabah, Malaysia. Ital. J. Zool. 65: 363–368.
Molióvâ, H. & Hubert, P. 1994. Canopy influence on rainfall fields’ microscale structure in tropical forests. J. Appl. Meteorol. 33: 1464–1467.
Newbery, D. McC., Campbell, E. J. F., Lee, Y. F., Ridsdale, C. E. & Still, M. J. 1992. Primary lowland dipterocarp forest at Danum Valley, Sabah, Malaysia: structure, relative abundance and family composition. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B. 335: 341–356.
Newell, R. E. & Gould-Stewart, S. 1981. A stratospheric fountain ? J. Atmos. Sci. 12: 2789–2796.
Noguchi, S., Nik, A. R., Sammori, T., Tani, M., & Tsuboyama, Y. 1996. Rainfall characteristics of tropical rain forest and temperate forest: comparison between Bukit Tarek, Peninsular Malaysia and Hitachi Ohta in Japan. J. Trop. For. Sci. 9: 206–220.
Pannatier, Y. 1996. Variowin: software for spatial data analysis in 2D. Springer-Verlag, New York.
Pinard, M. A. & F. E. Putz. 1996. Retaining forest biomass by reducing logging damage. Biotropica 28: 278–295.
Ramage, C. S. 1964. Diurnal variation of summer rainfall of Malaya. J. Trop. Geogr. 19: 62–68.
Riehl, H. 1954. Tropical meteorology. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Sherlock, M. D., 1997. Plot-scale hydrometric and tracer characterisation of soil water flow in two tropical rain forest catchments in Southeast Asia. Unpublished PhD thesis, Lancaster University.
Shuttleworth, W. J. 1988. Evaporation from Amazonian rain forest. Proc. R. Soc. Ser. B 233: 321–346.
Sinun, W., Meng, W. W., Douglas, I. & Spencer, T. 1992. Through-fall, stemflow, overland flow and throughflow in the Ulu Segama rain forest, Sabah, Malaysia. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B 233: 321–346.
Talip, M. A., 1996. Using a Geographical Information System (GIS) to analyse land use changes in eastern Sabah, Malaysia. Unpublished M.Sc. thesis, University of Manchester, UK.
Taylor, J. R. 1982. An introduction to error analysis. University Science Books, Mill Valley.
Thompson, B. W. 1951. An essay on the general circulation of the atmosphere over South-East Asia and the West Pacific. Quart. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc. 77: 569–597.
UNESCO. 1978. Tropical forest ecosystems (Chapter 12 ). UNESCO, Paris.
Walsh, R. P. D. 1996. Drought frequency changes in Sabah and adjacent parts of northern Borneo since the late nineteenth century and possible implications for tropical rain forest dynamics. J. Trop. Ecol. 12: 385–407.
Watts, I. E. M. 1955. Equatorial weather: with particular reference to Southeast Asia. University of London Press, London.
Weickmann, K. M., Lussky, G. R. & Kutzbach, J. E. 1985. Intraseasonal (30–60 day) fluctuations of outgoing longwave radiation and 250 mb streamfuction during northern winter. Mon. Weather Rev. 111: 1838–1858.
Whitmore, T. C. 1998. An introduction to tropical rain forests. Second Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Wolter, K. & Timlin, M. S. 1998. Measuring the strength of ENSO–how does 1997/98 rank ? Weather 53: 315–324.
Wood, C. A. 1948. Report on the weather of the Borneo-Celebes region, 1946. Quart. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc. 74: 144–160.
Young, P. C. 1998. Data-based mechanistic modelling of environmental, ecological, economic and engineering systems. Environ. Modell. Softw. 13: 105–122.
Young, P. C., Pedregal, D. J., & Tych, W. 1999. Dynamic harmonic regression. J. Forecasting 18: 369–394.
Yusop, Z. 1996. Nutrient cycling in secondary rain forest catchments of Peninsular Malaysia. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, Manchester.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chappell, N.A., Bidin, K., Tych, W. (2001). Modelling rainfall and canopy controls on net-precipitation beneath selectively-logged tropical forest. In: Linsenmair, K.E., Davis, A.J., Fiala, B., Speight, M.R. (eds) Tropical Forest Canopies: Ecology and Management. Forestry Sciences, vol 69. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3606-0_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3606-0_17
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5724-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-3606-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive