Forest cover change, climate variability, and hydrological responses

Abstract

Understanding ecohydrological response to environmental change is critical for protecting watershed functions, sustaining clean water supply, and other ecosystem services, safeguarding public safety, floods mitigation, and drought response. Understanding ecohyhdrological processes and their implications to forest and water management has become increasingly important in the Anthropocene (Li et al., 2017; Sun & Vose, 2016). In forested watersheds or landscapes, the complex relationships between climate and forest cover are commonly viewed as two key drivers of ecohydrological processes. Quantifying these relationships and the ecohydrological response to change is key to improved land‐use planning and management in forested watersheds. This special issue includes 11 selected papers presented at the 4th IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organization) Conference on Forests and Water in a Changing Environment held from July 6–9, 2015, in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. This collection represents the most recent studies on forest ecohydrological processes under a wide range of geographic regions and environmental settings.

Citation

Wei, Xiaohua; Winkler, Rita; Sun, Ge. 2017. Forest cover change, climate variability, and hydrological responses. Ecohydrology. 10(2): e1847-. e1848 2 p. https://doi.org/10.1002/eco.1847.