Articles | Volume 25, issue 9
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-4887-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-4887-2021
Research article
 | 
07 Sep 2021
Research article |  | 07 Sep 2021

Reduction of vegetation-accessible water storage capacity after deforestation affects catchment travel time distributions and increases young water fractions in a headwater catchment

Markus Hrachowitz, Michael Stockinger, Miriam Coenders-Gerrits, Ruud van der Ent, Heye Bogena, Andreas Lücke, and Christine Stumpp

Data sets

Model results underlying the paper ``Reduction of vegetation-accessible water storage capacity after deforestation affects catchment travel time distributions and increases young water fractions in a headwater catchment'' M. Hrachowitz https://doi.org/10.4121/14626050.v1

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Short summary
Deforestation affects how catchments store and release water. Here we found that deforestation in the study catchment led to a 20 % increase in mean runoff, while reducing the vegetation-accessible water storage from about 258 to 101 mm. As a consequence, fractions of young water in the stream increased by up to 25 % during wet periods. This implies that water and solutes are more rapidly routed to the stream, which can, after contamination, lead to increased contaminant peak concentrations.