VARIATION OF THROUGHFALL STEMFLOW AND INTERCEPTION OF RAINFALL IN A Quercus ilex L COPPICE

Abstract

Rainfall partitioning by vegetation plays an important role affecting the water balance at local scale due to the control that vegetation canopies exert by modifying both evaporation and the redistribution of precipitation in different fractions of throughfall, stemflow and interception loss. These fractions have been evaluated during three years in an evergreen oak coppice in the eastern Algeria using specific collection devices. The results revealed that the mean rate of throughfall was 66.30% of the open field precipitation (gross rainfall). Stemflow represented on average a very small fraction (7.13% of open field precipitation), whereas the interception loss was relatively high (26.46% of the open field precipitation). The use of linear regressions showed strong correlations between open field precipitation and different fractions of water (stemflow, throughfall and interception loss) at the studied station.