Abstract
Rainwater dynamics at forested hillslopes are one of the most important themes in forest hydrology, because they have large effects on storm and base flow hydrographs, occurrences of slope failures, material transports in forest ecosystem, and stream water chemistry. Rainwater infiltration and discharge processes at forested hillslopes can be effectively studied by using methodologies developed in soil physical studies, which includes methods for determining saturated-unsaturated soil hydraulic properties, equipments for measuring matric potential and water content in field soils, and numerical simulation techniques for saturated-unsaturated soil water flow. This paper introduces several previous and new studies which applied the methodologies of soil physics to the analyses of rainwater dynamics at forested hillslopes. Topics includes characteristics of forest soil hydraulic properties in comparison with disturbed sandy and loamy soils, effects of pore structure of forest soil on rainwater infiltration, indices of water holding capacity of forest soils, effects of soil water-repellency on heterogeneous infiltration and occurrence of surface runoff, experiments and modeling of soil-pipe flow, as well as rainwater infiltration in weathered bedrock.
