Comparison was made between the annual evaporation from forest lands and the computed potential evapotranspirations. The evaporation was computed from the measured runoff at the four runoff experiment stations of the Governmental Forest Experiment Station of Japan. It was recognized that the mean annual evaporation appoximately coincided with the computed potential evapotranspiration by Thornthwaite's mehtod for the northern region higher than 40 degrees N. L. and by Author's method for the region lower than that.
Six portable evapotranspirometers were established in the court of Shiga Prefectural Junior College and evapotranspiration (
ET) and potential evapotranspiration (
PE) were measured in grass plots and bare plots. The ratio of
ET to
PE ranged from 1 to 0.6 for each of the both plots.
Surface runoff and seepage were measured in order to know the effect of the humus layers in forest lands where grow typical Japanese species of trees, the cryptomeria (I), the Japanese cypress (II), the red pine (III) and broadleaved trees (IV), on runoff.
The soil tanks used in the experiment were 15 cm wide, 60cm long, 10cm deep and had a seepage orifice of 1cm in diameter at the center of its lower bottom. The surface soil of the granitic forest land near the College was put in the soil tanks under the natural condition. The tanks were placed on the stand with variable slopes (20, 30 and 40 degrees), and artificial rainfall of intensity about 1 to 3mm per minute was applied on them.
Runoff and seepage were measured each 5 minutes until constant values were obtained. The mean values of the final runoff from the soil tanks of each species of trees were: I: 72%, II: 65%, III: 48% and IV: 58%. And the steeper the slope of tank was, the smaller Was the difference of runoff coefficients by the species.
The measured evapotranspiration coefficients of trees were: the red pine: 0.7-0.8, the cryptomeria: 0.8, Chinese anise (an evergreen broad-leaved tree): 0.5-0.6, maple (a deciduous tree): 0.6.
It is assumed that the maximum deviation of soil moisture storage is about 170 to 180mm from the results of the measurements of soil moisture in the surfce layer, mainly humid brown forest soil, of 11 forest lands in Japan.
It is intended to induce a formula for computing runoff coefficient by applying the above results and by investigating the daily runoff at the four runoff experiment stations.
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