Wetlands

, Volume 36, Issue 4, pp 681–688 | Cite as

Sub-canopy Evapotranspiration from Floating Vegetation and Open Water in a Swamp Forest

  • Scott T. Allen
  • Brandon L. Edwards
  • Michele L. Reba
  • Richard F. Keim
Original Research
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

Among previous studies, there are large discrepancies in the difference between evapotranspiration from wetland vegetation and evaporation from open water. In this study, we investigate evapotranspiration differences between water and vegetation in a scenario that has otherwise not been extensively investigated: evapotranspiration from floodwaters in the sub-canopy environment. This study was conducted under a closed canopy baldcypress-ash-tupelo swamp forest in southeastern Louisiana. Water levels were measured in paired, partially-submerged evaporation pans, one with floating aquatic vegetation and the other without. Over the 5 month measurement period (June-November), average evapotranspiration rates from floating vegetation and open water were approximately 1.35 ± 0.10 and 1.36 ± 0.06 mm day−1, respectively. Open water evaporation was generally higher in summer, and evapotranspiration from the vegetated water surface was higher in fall, likely due to changes in the sub-canopy energy environment related to both regional climate and site canopy phenology.

Keywords

Water balance Salvinia Latent heat Understory Macrophytes Wetland 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Notes

Acknowledgments

Project funding was provided by the Lucius W. Gilbert Foundation, a Grant-In-Aid of Research from Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under award LAB94181. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

References

  1. Abtew W (1996) Evapotranspiration measurements and modeling for three wetland systems in south Florida1. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 32:465–473. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.1996.tb04044.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Abtew W (2005) Evapotranspiration in the everglades; comparison of Bowen ratio measurements and model estimations. American Society of Agricultural Engineers 2005 Annual Meeting. doi:  10.13031/2013.19812
  3. Abtew DW, Melesse PDA (2013) Wetland evapotranspiration. Evaporation and evapotranspiration measurements and estimations. Springer, Netherlands, pp 93–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Allen YC, Suir GM (2014) Using high-resolution, regional-scale data to characterize floating aquatic nuisance vegetation in coastal Louisiana navigation channels. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg, MS, No. ERDC/TN APCRP-EA-27Google Scholar
  5. Allen LH Jr, Sinclair TR, Bennett JM (1997) Evapotranspiration of vegetation of Florida: perpetuated misconceptions versus mechanistic processes. Proceedings - Soil and Crop Science Society of Florida 56:1–10Google Scholar
  6. Allen ST, Edwards BL, Keim RF, Reba ML (2014) Measurement of sub-canopy evaporation in a flooded forest. Evapotranspiration: Challenges in Measurement and Modeling from Leaf to the Landscape Scale and Beyond Conference Proceedings of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers. doi:  10.13031/et.1815545
  7. Allen ST, Whitsell ML, Keim RF (2015) Leaf area allometrics and morphometrics in baldcypress. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 45:963–969. doi: 10.1139/cjfr-2015-0039 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Andersen IH, Dons C, Nilsen S, Haugstad MK (1985) Growth, photosynthesis and photorespiration of Lemna gibba: response to variations in CO2 and O2 concentrations and photon flux density. Photosynthesis Research 6:87–96. doi: 10.1007/BF00029048 CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  9. Anderson MG, Idso SB (1987) Surface geometry and stomatal conductance effects on evaporation from aquatic macrophytes. Water Resources Research 23:1037–1042. doi: 10.1029/WR023i006p01037 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. Blanken PD (1998) Turbulent flux measurements above and below the overstory of a boreal aspen forest. Boundary-Layer Meteorology 89:109–140. doi: 10.1023/A:1001557022310 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Brown S (1981) A comparison of the structure, primary productivity, and transpiration of cypress ecosystems in Florida. Ecological Monographs 51:403–427. doi: 10.2307/2937322 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Burba GG, Verma SB, Kim J (1999) A comparative study of surface energy fluxes of three communities (Phragmites australis, Scirpus acutus, and open water) in a prairie wetland ecosystem. Wetlands 19:451–457. doi: 10.1007/BF03161776 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. Couvillion BR, Barras JA (2006) Late 20th century land use / land cover changes in the northern Gulf Coast. http://ngom.usgs.gov/task3_3/
  14. Crundwell ME (1986) A review of hydrophyte evapotranspiration. Revue d’Hydrobiologie Tropicale 19:215–232Google Scholar
  15. de la Sota ER, de Pazos LAC (1990) On the stomata of Salvinia herzogii (Salviniaceae, Pteridophyta). Plant Systematics and Evolution 172:119–125. doi: 10.1007/BF00937802 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Dingman SL (2002) Physical hydrology. Waveland Press, Inc., Long GroveGoogle Scholar
  17. Drexler JZ, Snyder RL, Spano D, Paw UKT (2004) A review of models and micrometeorological methods used to estimate wetland evapotranspiration. Hydrological Processes 18:2071–2101. doi: 10.1002/hyp.1462 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. Egertson CJ, Kopaska JA, Downing JA (2004) A century of change in macrophyte abundance and composition in response to agricultural eutrophication. Hydrobiologia 524:145–156. doi: 10.1023/B:HYDR.0000036129.40386.ce CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. Eisenlohr WS (1966) Water loss from a natural pond through transpiration by hydrophytes. Water Resources Research 2:443–453. doi: 10.1029/WR002i003p00443 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Ewel KC, Smith JE (1992) Evapotranspiration from Florida pondcypress swamps. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 28:299–304. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.1992.tb03995.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Guenther SM, Moore RD, Gomi T (2012) Riparian microclimate and evaporation from a coastal headwater stream, and their response to partial-retention forest harvesting. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 164:1–9. doi: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2012.05.003 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Hough RA, Fornwall MD, Negele BJ et al (1989) Plant community dynamics in a chain of lakes: principal factors in the decline of rooted macrophytes with eutrophication. Hydrobiologia 173:199–217. doi: 10.1007/BF00008968 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Jarvis PG, McNaughton KG (1986) Stomatal control of transpiration: scaling up from leaf to region. In: Ford AM (ed) Advances in ecological research. Academic, pp 1–49Google Scholar
  24. Kettridge N, Thompson DK, Bombonato L et al (2013) The ecohydrology of forested peatlands: simulating the effects of tree shading on moss evaporation and species composition. Journal of Geophysical Research, Biogeosciences 118:422–435. doi: 10.1002/jgrg.20043 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Krauss KW, Duberstein JA, Conner WH (2014) Assessing stand water use in four coastal wetland forests using sapflow techniques: annual estimates, errors and associated uncertainties. Hydrological Processes. doi: 10.1002/hyp.10130 Google Scholar
  26. Liu S (1996) Evapotranspiration from cypress (Taxodium ascendens) wetlands and slash pine (Pinus elliottii) uplands in north-central Florida. Dissertation, University of FloridaGoogle Scholar
  27. Liu S, Riekerk H, Gholz HL (1998) Simulation of evapotranspiration from Florida pine flatwoods. Ecological Modelling 114:19–34. doi: 10.1016/S0304-3800(98)00103-3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Luque GM, Bellard C, Bertelsmeier C et al (2013) The 100th of the world’s worst invasive alien species. Biological Invasions 16:981–985. doi: 10.1007/s10530-013-0561-5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. Mao LM, Bergman MJ, Tai CC (2002) Evapotranspiration measurement and estimation of three wetland environments in the Upper St. Johns River Basin, Florida. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 38:1271–1285. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.2002.tb04347.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Masoner JR, Stannard DI, Christenson SC (2008) Differences in evaporation between a floating pan and Class A Pan on land. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 44:552–561. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.2008.00181.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Mitsch WJ, Gosselink JG (2007) Wetlands, 4th edn. Wiley, New YorkGoogle Scholar
  32. Monteith J, Unsworth M (2008) Principles of environmental physics, 3rd edn. Academic, BurlingtonGoogle Scholar
  33. Parkhurst RS, Winter TC, Rosenberry DO, Sturrock AM (1998) Evaporation from a small prairie wetland in the Cottonwood Lake area, North Dakota—an energy-budget study. Wetlands 18:272–287. doi: 10.1007/BF03161663 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Rao AS (1988) Evapotranspiration rates of Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms, Salvinia molesta d.s. Mitchell and Nymphaea lotus (L.) Willd. Linn. in a humid tropical climate. Aquatic Botany 30:215–222. doi: 10.1016/0304-3770(88)90052-6 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Raz-Yaseef N, Rotenberg E, Yakir D (2010) Effects of spatial variations in soil evaporation caused by tree shading on water flux partitioning in a semi-arid pine forest. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 150:454–462. doi: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2010.01.010 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Reba ML, Pomeroy J, Marks D, Link TE (2012) Estimating surface sublimation losses from snowpacks in a mountain catchment using eddy covariance and turbulent transfer calculations. Hydrological Processes 26:3699–3711. doi: 10.1002/hyp.8372 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  37. Reifsnyder WE, Lull HW (1965) Radiant energy in relation to forests. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Technical Bulletin No. 1344, Washington, DC, USAGoogle Scholar
  38. Rogers HH, Davis DE (1972) Nutrient removal by waterhyacinth. Weed Science 20:423–428. doi: 10.2307/4042146 Google Scholar
  39. Shoemaker WB, Sumner DM, Castillo A (2005) Estimating changes in heat energy stored within a column of wetland surface water and factors controlling their importance in the surface energy budget. Water Resources Research 41. doi:  10.1029/2005WR004037
  40. Snyder RL, Boyd CE (1987) Evapotranspiration by Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms and Typha latifolia L. Aquatic Botany 27:217–227CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  41. Sun G, Riekerk H, Comerford NB (1998) Modeling the forest hydrology of wetland-upland ecosystems in Florida. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 34:827–841. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.1998.tb01519.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  42. Tillberg E, Dons C, Haugstad M, Nilsen S (1981) Effect of abscisic acid on CO2 exchange in Lemna gibba. Physiologia Plantarum 52:401–406. doi: 10.1111/j.1399-3054.1981.tb02707.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. Wilson KB, Hanson PJ, Baldocchi DB (2000) Factors controlling evaporation and energy partitioning beneath a deciduous forest over an annual cycle. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 102:83–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Society of Wetland Scientists 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Scott T. Allen
    • 1
  • Brandon L. Edwards
    • 1
  • Michele L. Reba
    • 2
  • Richard F. Keim
    • 1
  1. 1.School of Renewable Natural ResourcesLouisiana State UniversityBaton RougeUSA
  2. 2.USDA-ARS National Sedimentation LaboratoryJonesboroUSA

Personalised recommendations