Rainfall partitioning by vegetation under Mediterranean conditions. A review of studies in Europe

SummaryRainfall partitioning by vegetation plays an important role affecting the water balance at local and catchment scale due to the control that vegetation canopies exert by modifying both evaporation and the redistribution of incident rainfall. The parameters associated with this process can be found in the literature but this task is not always easy. In this context, this paper presents an exhaustive review of experimental studies dealing with rainfall interception in the Mediterranean area of Europe in the last 30 years, with information on 29 different species (89% referred to tree stands and 11% to shrubs or bushes) from 83 sites in 63 research areas found in 90 papers on studies performed in France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The revision includes articles in international journals and books (37%), local journals (27%), Ph.D. dissertations, Master’s theses and technical documents (27%) and proceedings (10%) until 2004. The studies are representative of a wide range of rainfall, temperatures and potential evapotranspiration. The lack of a standard protocol to measure bulk rainfall, throughfall and stemflow in interception studies makes it difficult to merge information in this type of review. Nevertheless, this review presents a detailed classification of the information compiled according to research focus, climate and vegetation characteristics, rainfall partitioning flux measurement methods and the quality of the information, giving rise to an important database of rainfall partitioning studies in the European Mediterranean area.