Abstract
Forest practitioners are becoming increasingly interested in understanding a larger set of ecosystem services from forests, beyond timber production. One of these is rainfall generation by forests. However, while forests are known to play a major role in global hydrology, there is substantial uncertainty about forest impact on rainfall, resulting in long-lasting myths about forests - rainfall relationships. Moving beyond the myths is difficult since the effects of forest change on hydrology often is complex and differ with both geography and the specifics of forest structure. In this proposal we focus on moisture recycling by forests; i.e. where evaporation from forests returns to land as precipitation downwind. We address three outstanding research gaps. First, we conduct a systematic inter-comparison of how forest change alters precipitation depending on both forest type and geographic location. Second, we analyze how forest age and plantations affect moisture recycling. Third, we investigate the role of moisture recycling in forests for mediating droughts. We will also co-develop a set of plausible forest change scenarios together with end-users to investigate policy-relevant potential future forest-rainfall alterations. We have a unique capacity to analyze these aspects since we recently developed two global models (a land-surface evaporation model and a atmospheric moisture tracking model) that allow us to explore land use change effects on moisture recycling
Sweden