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

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Cited articles

Ala-aho, P., Tetzlaff, D., McNamara, J. P., Laudon, H., and Soulsby, C.: Using isotopes to constrain water flux and age estimates in snow-influenced catchments using the STARR (Spatially distributed Tracer-Aided RainfallRunoff) model, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 5089–5110, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-5089-2017, 2017. 
Angermann, L., Jackisch, C., Allroggen, N., Sprenger, M., Zehe, E., Tronicke, J., Weiler, M., and Blume, T.: Form and function in hillslope hydrology: characterization of subsurface flow based on response observations, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 3727–3748, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-3727-2017, 2017. 
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Benettin, P., Van Der Velde, Y., Van Der Zee, S. E., Rinaldo, A., and Botter, G.: Chloride circulation in a lowland catchment and the formulation of transport by travel time distributions, Water Resour. Res., 49, 4619–4632, 2013. 
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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.
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