Efecto de la vegetación en la intercepción de la precipitación en la precordillera de la región del Maule, Chile

this study compared the behavior of an oak-hualo secondary forest, where the dominant species are nothofagus obliqua and nothofagus glauca, with that of a 12-year-old pinus radiata d. don plantation in the precipitation-interception process. the study was conducted at the el picazo experimental station in the town of san clemente, maule region, between july 2007 and july 2008 in two neighboring small-scale sub-watersheds with similar soil, exposure and slope conditions, but with different vegetation covers. the vegetation of each watershed was characterized and the plot density indicators obtained. the native cover indicators greatly surpassed those of the exotic covers. to record precipitation, two hobo rain gauges were placed in each sub-watershed. equidistant from these, another rain gauge was set up without vegetation cover. in total, 21 storms were recorded, characterizing temporally and spatially open and under-canopy precipitation behavior. the results indicate that although the vegetation covers have numerical differences, these do not translate into statistically significant differences. in addition, it was found that interception depends more on crown architecture, spatial distribution of the trees and type of leaves than on the number of trees per plot.