2018 Volume 31 Issue 6 Pages 487-499
The study trends of the hillslope hydrology and related researches in the forested catchment were reviewed in the recent 30 years. Until the end of 1980’s when the Japan Society of Hydrology and Water Resources has been founded, fundamentals of physical aspects in hillslope hydrology have mostly been established. After this period, there were several directions of further developments of research subjects beyond the above fundamentals. One is the precise description of elemental hydrological processes using chemical and isotopic tracers. These progresses were strongly supported by improvements in chemical and stable isotope analysis. The other development was recognized as the usage of hydrological information in the biogeochemical processes in the catchment ecosystems. Researches describing nutrients dynamics have continuously been recognized their importance in the north America, Europe and Japan, while the related subjects change from acid rain influences to nitrogen saturation. Mechanistic understanding of the hydrological phenomena under an extreme meteorological event is currently one of the most important subjects in the context of the adaptation to global change. The understandings on disturbance and recovery processes in catchment ecosystems are becoming important as fundamentals for planning resilient countermeasures against the natural disasters.
