Broadleaf afforestation impacts on terrestrial hydrology insignificant compared to climate change in Great Britain

Buechel, Marcus; Slater, Louise; Dadson, Simon

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2081-2024

Articles | Volume 28, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2081-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2081-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 28, issue 9

Research article

|

08 May 2024

Research article |

| 08 May 2024

Broadleaf afforestation impacts on terrestrial hydrology insignificant compared to climate change in Great Britain

Marcus Buechel, Louise Slater, and Simon Dadson

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2081-2024-supplement

Data sets

Realistic afforestation scenarios in Great Britain at a 1 km scale to run with the land surface model JULES Marcus Buechel https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7957084

Future projections of meteorological variables at 1 km resolution for the United Kingdom 198--2080 derived from UK Climate Projections 2018 Emma L. Robinson et al. https://doi.org/10.5285/8194b416cbee482b89e0dfbe17c5786c

Model code and software

Jules-Lsm.github.io Jules-Lsm https://github.com/jules-lsm/jules-lsm.github.io

Short summary

Afforestation has been proposed internationally, but the hydrological implications of such large increases in the spatial extent of woodland are not fully understood. In this study, we use a land surface model to simulate hydrology across Great Britain with realistic afforestation scenarios and potential climate changes. Countrywide afforestation minimally influences hydrology, when compared to climate change, and reduces low streamflow whilst not lowering the highest flows.