Water budgets of three small catchments under montane forest in Ecuador: experimental and modelling approach

The water budget of forested catchments controls the local water supply and influences the regional climate. To assess the anthropogenic impact on the water cycle, we constructed a water budget for three ∼10 ha catchments under lower montane forest on the east-facing slope of the Andes in south Ecuador at 1900–2150 m elevation. We used field hydrological measurements and modelled surface flows with TOPMODEL, a semi-distributed catchment model. We measured incident precipitation, throughfall, stemflow, and surface flow between May 1998 and April 2002 in hourly to weekly resolution, and determined all variables needed to parameterise TOPMODEL. On average, of the four monitored years and three…