Water use across a land-cover change trajectory of grazing pasure to Pinus patula plantations in the seasonal cloud belt of Veracruz State, Eastern Mexico
Supervisors and collaborators:
- H. Asbjornsen - University of New Hampshire, Darmouth, NH USA
- T.E. Dawson - University of California, Berkely
- L.A. Bruijnzeel - VU University
- F. Holwerda - Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico
- G. Goldsmith - University of California, Berkely
- S. Gotsch - Franklin and Marshall College, USA
- M. Gomez Cardenas - INAFOR, Mexico
Duration: 2009-2013
Funding: National Science Foundation of the U.S.; University of New Hampshire
Research questions
To restore the hydrological services attributed to montane (cloud) forests, reforestation of cleared and degraded lands is being promoted, often within the context of payments for environmental services (PES) schemes.
In Mexico, a number of PES schemes have been implemented without the required ecohydrological information to ensure the expected goals of reforestation and forest restoration will be achieved.
The present research aims to answer the following questions with respect to the impacts of planting fast-growing Pinus patulatrees on (degraded) pasture land in the fog belt of eastern Mexico:
- How do daily, seasonal and annual transpiration rates at the whole-tree and stand scales change with increasing pine age? Is there a consistent radial pattern of sap velocity across trees of different sizes/ages?
- How much water is "saved" from being lost to the atmosphere via tree transpiration (seasonally and annually) due to the suppression effect of cloud immersion? What are the implications of reduced cloud immersion on seasonal and annual rates of stand-level transpiration from young and mature pines?
- How does total water use (transpiration plus interception evaporation) of differently aged pine plantations differ from that of grazed pasture?
Publications
- Alvarado-Barrientos, M.S., Holwerda, F., Asbjornsen, H., Dawson, T.E., and Bruijnzeel, L.A. (2013). Suppression of transpiration due to cloud immersion in a seasonally dry Mexican weeping pine plantation. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology (accepted).
- Alvarado-Barrientos, M.S. (2013). Plant water use and canopy-fog interactions across a land use change trajectory of pasture to pine reforestation in a montane cloud belt. PhD Thesis, Univ. New Hampshire, Durham, USA, 176 pp.
- Alvarado-Barrientos, M.S., Hernandez-Sanatana, V. & Asbjornsen, H. (2013). Variability of the radial profile of sap velocity in Pinus patula from contrasting stands within the seasonal cloud forest zone of Veracruz, Mexico. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 168: 109-119.
- Alvarado-Barrientos, M.S., Holwerda, F., Asbjornsen, H., Dawson, T. (2012) Linking fog climatology and the impact of cloud immersion on transpiration of Pinus patula within a seasonal tropical montane cloud forest environment. Oral presentation at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, 10 August 2012, Portland, OR, USA.
- Alvarado-Barrientos, M.S., Holwerda, F., Asbjornsen, H., Dawson, T.E., Saber, T. & Bruijnzeel, L.A. (2010). Effects of overcast and foggy conditions on transpiration rates of Pinus patula trees along a chrono-sequence within the cloud belt of the Sierra Madre Oriental, central Veracruz, Mexico. Oral presentation, 2010 AGU Fall Meeting, 13-17 December 2010, San Francisco.
- Alvarado-Barrientos, M.S., Asbjornsen, H., Dawson, T.E., Bruijnzeel, L.A. & Holwerda, F. (2010). How do fog events affect transpiration across a chronosequence of Pinus patula within a seasonal montane cloud forest? Poster paper presented at the Pan-American Advanced Studies Institute Workshop on Interdisciplinary Studies on Global Climate Change, & the Ecology & Management of Tropical Montane Ecosystems, Cordillera Central, Dominican Republic, 6-14 March 2010.
