Stemflow Data

Stemflow is potential pathway for rainfall to reach the ground surface that would not be detectable via throughfall collectors. Stemflow in principle is not an overly complicated measurement at the individual tree level. Flexible tubing was cut in half and wrapped a little more than one full circumference around each test tree at breast height as illustrated by Fig 1. Water from each tree drains into the same type of tipping bucket used for the throughfall troughs where a data logger monitors the number of tips. Of course, the difficulty associated with a meaningful estimate of catchment average stemflow is up scaling individual measurements. This is an ongoing research focus that will be elaborated in the future. Based upon the combination of our observations and tree count surveys we decided to instrument four established palm trees, one medium deciduous, and one large deciduous tree.

Fig 1 Pictures of instrumentation used to measure stemflow on two selected trees, tubing cut in half is wrapped around a tree to capture any stemflow and the directed into a large tipping bucket gage.