Investigating the Role of Stemflow in Rainfall Partitioning in Lowland Tropical Forest

• Published in: Journal of Mechanical Engineering
• Main Author: Azida A.B.A.; Lee W.K.; Latif Z.A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: UiTM Press 2021
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85140800435&partnerID=40&md5=1f19d42c99912c3431eb995cbc8d6589

Rainfall interception is the amount of rainfall retained in a canopy after a storm event has occurred. Interception loss is calculated by the difference between total rainfall and the water that reaches the ground, i.e., throughfall and stemflow. Stemflow is the fraction of rainfall that drains from a tree's branches and leaves and goes down to the tree's stem. In this study, stemflow, throughfall and precipitation data were collected for 12 months in a lowland tropical forest dominated by Scorodocarpus borneensis and Cinnamomum porrectum (Roxb.). Analysis from 94 rainfall events resulted in stemflow values averaging 0.012% of total precipitation, with a range of 0.005–0.026% for both species. Another observation is that the rainfall depths threshold is 17 mm for Scorodocarpus borneensis and Cinnamomum porrectum (Roxb.) and the mean funneling ratio is 13.43, ranging from 0.14 to 89.11 for both species. Depending on the rainfall depth, the funnelling ratio varied substantially for different rainfall events. © 2021 College of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia.