How Math Helps us Predict Water Flows in Forests

Abstract

Water flows through forests in many ways, so it is difficult to understand and predict where and when it will flow. Understanding how water flows through forests is important, as it affects many of the services that forests offer to people, like lumber for houses and cleaner air. Water scientists (called hydrologists) have a way to reduce the complex water flow of a forest into something we can explain with simple math: they turn forests into buckets! In this article, we describe a forest “water park,” where leafy and bark buckets fill and empty into each other or onto the forest floor. These buckets help us describe and predict water flows in forests using simple arithmetic and statistics. We focus on the flow of rainwater as it drains through the canopy to the ground, contributing water needed for tree growth and filling the groundwater that we drink.