Impact of rainfall interception on hydrologic partitioning and soil erosion in natural and managed seasonally dry ecosystems

Quantifying the effects of land use change and rainfall variability in seasonal, dry ecosystems is crucial to sustainable management of soil and water resources. In particular, changes in rainfall interception effects on hydrologic partitioning and soil erosion due to land use change are among the least known processes, despite their importance for water resource managements, in terms of water availability for ecosystem and society and water quality and erosion problems. In this work we quantify the interception losses in different types of vegetation (coffee, lemon and vegetation of natural forest) found in the Tapacurá basin in the Pernambuco state of NE Brazil, coupling field experiments and analytical models. The interception losses were measured with rain gauges installed in three types of vegetation along with stemflow collectors. Close to the coffee plantation, a meteorological station was also installed for measurement of the necessary variables for the model calibrations. As expected, the results show that rainfall events of smaller magnitude proportionally have larger relative interception losses, with larger differences in the wet season. The model results also allow us to quantify the nonlinear behavior of the interception process, at the same time providing a valuable tool to estimate the interception loss due to changes in vegetation and rainfall regime and thus to improve water resource management in seasonally dry tropics .