Changes in throughfall induced by low‐severity fire in a coniferous and broadleaved mixed forest

Abstract

AbstractForest fires, as a prominent main natural disturbance in forest ecosystems, have a critical influence on hydrological processes through the alteration of forest stand structure. Despite throughfall (TF) being the dominant component of rainfall partitioning in forest ecosystems, limited research has thoroughly investigated how forest fire affects the spatial and temporal patterns of TF. This study examined TF patterns in response to low‐severity fire in a coniferous and broadleaved mixed forest in Central China. Our results showed that TF exhibited an increasing trend regarding gross rainfall, and its variability decreased with increasing gross rainfall regardless of burning states. Low‐severity fire induced a considerable enhancement in TF rate, enhancing it from 71.1% to 77.9%, and increased the coefficient of variation from 19.4% to 23.9%. Additionally, TF temporal patterns of burned forest were found to be marginally less stable than unburned forest. We used a sample size of 16 and 25 for unburned and burned forests, respectively, to accurately and reliably acquire TF with an accepted error of 10% and a 95% confidence level. Our findings suggest that low‐severity fire can enhance TF yield and variability, decrease temporal stability. Moreover, we recommend increasing the sample size of burned forest to ensure the collection of representative TF. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding and improve the prediction of forest hydrological processes in response to fire and optimize the sampling scheme of TF.