Short communication: Concentrated impacts by tree canopy drips – hotspots of soil erosion in forests

Abstract

The degradation of ground vegetation cover caused by large grazing herbivores frequently results in enhanced erosion rates in forest ecosystems. Splash erosion can be caused by drop impacts with a high throughfall kinetic energy (TKE) from the tree canopy. Notably larger canopy drips from structurally mediated woody surface points appear to induce even higher TKE and generate concentrated impact locations causing severe focus points of soil erosion. However, TKE at these locations has rarely been reported. This pilot study investigated the intensity of TKE at a concentrated impact location and compared it with general TKE locations under the canopy and freefall kinetic energy (FKE) outside the forest. We measured precipitation, TKE and FKE using splash cups at seven locations under Japanese beech trees and five locations outside the forest during the leafless and leafed seasons in 2021 in a mixed forest with evergreen coniferous trees and deciduous broadleaved trees in Japan. The TKE at the concentrated impact location was 15.2 and 49.7 times higher than that at the general locations under the beech and FKE, respectively. This study confirmed that canopy drip from woody surfaces could be a hotspot of soil erosion in temperate forest ecosystems. Throughfall precipitation at the concentrated impact location was 11.4 and 8.1 times higher than that at general locations and freefall, respectively. TKE per 1 mm precipitation (here, “unit TKE”) at the concentrated impact location (39.2 ± 23.7 J m−2 mm−1) was much higher than that at general locations (22.0 ± 12.7 J m−2 mm−1) and unit FKE (4.5 ± 3.5 J m−2 mm−1). Unit TKE in the leafless season was significantly lower than in the leafed season because of fewer redistribution of canopy drips induced only by woody tissue. Nevertheless, unit TKE at the concentrated impact location in the leafless season (36.4 J m−2 mm−1) was still higher than at general locations in the leafed season. These results show that potentially high rates of sediment detachment can be induced not only by throughfall precipitation but also by larger throughfall drop size distributions at the concentrated impact location, even in the leafless season. Further studies with more replication building on this first report are necessary to investigate how many of these concentrated impact locations may occur on average with different tree species to better assess the extent of the erosion risk under forests.