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Estimating the Contribution of Forests to the Nation's Water Supply

This project has two main goals. The first goal is to estimate the volumes of water that annually become available on forests (and other land covers) in the U.S. Available water volume (water supply) is being estimated, at the regional scale, as precipitation minus evapotranspiration (ET). Estimating ET at the regional scale for the entire U.S. has been a major hurdle and is being accomplished in cooperation with scientists at Colorado State University. The publications listed below describe our efforts so far to estimate regional ET.

Mean annual contributions to water supply have been estimated for three sets of areas of the coterminous U.S.:

• by state and water resource region, and by land cover class and land management class, in Mean Annual Water Supply in the Contiguous United States (these estimates are an update of earlier estimates presented in Brown et al. 2008 ),
  
  
• by national forest in Estimated mean annual contribution to water supply from units of the National Forest System of the U.S. Forest Service ,
  
  
• by wilderness areas in Water Supply from Wilderness Areas .

The other goal is to estimate the value of runoff from national forest areas (see Brown 2004). Work continues toward this goal.

Selected Publications

To view the following PDF files, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader, available free of charge from Adobe's website.

• Brown, Thomas C., Michael T. Hobbins, and Jorge A. Ramirez. 2008. Spatial distribution of water supply in the coterminous United States. Journal of the American Water Resources Association. 44(6):1474-1487.
  (1.2 MB PDF file)
  
  
• Ramirez, Jorge A., Michael T. Hobbins, and Thomas. C. Brown. 2005. Observational evidence of the complementary relationship in regional evaporation lends strong support for Bouchet’s hypothesis. Geophysical Research Letters, 32, L15401.
  
  
• Brown, Thomas C. 2004. The Marginal Economic Value of Streamflow From National Forests.
  DP-04-1, RM-4851.
  (1 MB PDF file)
  
  
• Hobbins, Michael. T., Jorge. A. Ramirez, and Thomas. C. Brown. 2004. Trends in pan evaporation and actual evapotranspiration across the conterminous U.S.: Paradoxical or complementary? Geophysical Research Letters 31(13), L13503.
  
  
• Hobbins, Michael T., Jorge A. Ramirez, and Thomas C. Brown. Trends in Regional Evapotranspiration Across the United States Under the Complimentary Relationship Hypothesis. In: proceedings of the 21st Annual AGU Hydrology Days, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, April 2-5, 2001, Jorge A. Ramirez ed., pp. 106-121.
  (485 KB PDF file)
  
  
• Hobbins, Michael T., Jorge A. Ramirez, Thomas C. Brown, and Lodevicus H. J. M. Classens. 2001. The Complementary Relationship in the Estimation of Regional Evapotranspiration: The Complementary Relationship Areal Evapotranspiration and Advection-Aridity Models. Water Resources Research 37(5):1367-1387.
  (8.5 MB PDF file)
  
  
• Hobbins, Michael T., Jorge A. Ramirez, and Thomas C. Brown. 2001. The Complementary Relationship in the Estimation of Regional Evapotranspiration: An Enhanced Advection-Aridity Model. Water Resources Research 37(5):1389-1403.
  (333 KB PDF file)
  
  
• Hobbins, Michael T., Jorge A. Ramirez, and Thomas C. Brown. The Complementary Relationship in Regional Evapotranspiration: The CRAE Model and the Advection-Aridity Approach. In: proceedings of the 19th Annual AGU Hydrology Days, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, August 16-20, 1999, Hubert J. Morel-Seytoux ed., pp. 199-212.
  (339 KB PDF file)
  
  
• Brown, Thomas C., Benjamin L. Harding, and Elizabeth A. Payton. 1990. Marginal Economic Value of Streamflow: A Case Study for the Colorado River Basin. Water Resources Research 26(12): 2845-2859.
  (1 MB PDF file)

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