Modeling Potential Impacts of Planting Palms or Tree in Small Holder Fruit Plantations on Ecohydrological Processes in the Central Amazon †

Forests

Norbert Kunert⁴  Luiza Maria Teóphilo Aparecido³  Priscila Barros¹  Niro Higuchi¹  Ge Sun² 

[1] Laboratory of Forest Management, National Institute for Research in the Amazon, Manaus 69060-001, Brazil; E-Mails:;id="af1-forests-06-02530">1Department for Biogeochemical Processes, Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena 07745, Germa;Laboratory of Ecohydrology, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 505781, USA; E-Mail:;Department for Biogeochemical Processes, Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena 07745, Germany

关键词: sap flux;    transpiration;    monocot;    dicot;    terra firme;   

DOI  :  10.3390/f6082530

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Native fruiting plants are widely cultivated in the Amazon, but little information on their water use characteristics can be found in the literature. To explore the potential impacts of plantations on local to regional water balance, we studied plant water use characteristics of two native fruit plants commonly occurring in the Amazon region. The study was conducted in a mixed fruit plantation containing a dicot tree species (Cupuaçu, Theobroma grandiflorum) and a monocot palm species (Açai, Euterpe oleracea) close to the city of Manaus, in the Central Amazon. Scaling from sap flux measurements, palms had a 3.5-fold higher water consumption compared to trees with a similar diameter. Despite the high transpiration rates of the palms, our plantation had only one third of the potential water recycling capacity of natural forests in the area. Converting natural forest into such plantations will thus result in significantly higher runoff rates.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.