Long-term measurements of stand water uptake in Swedish boreal forest

Long-term measurements of sap flow were performed to estimate actual transp iration of a mixed pine/spruce sub-boreal stand. There was a variation in w ater use for the growth periods of 1994-1996 that reflected the hydro-clima tic conditions in these years. The variability of water fluxes at tree leve l was generally high. This forced an application of a ratio 'stand to sampl e trees' instead of a scaling curve when extrapolating fluxes to a stand le vel. For about 60-year-old-stand with the leaf area index (LAI) of 4-6 and the basal area of 29 m(2), transpiration reached the maximum of 3.6 mm and the mean of 1 mm day(-1) for about 180-day long growth period. There were d ifferences in water use for pine and spruce. Quantitatively most important was the difference in spring periods when transpiration of pines only gradu ally increased to reach proportions correlated tightly with evaporative dem and. On the contrary, spruce transpired in accord with the evaporative cond itions already at the beginning of the growth period, provided soil moistur e was not limiting the uptake. Pine seemed to be more drought-tolerant comp ared to spruce. Though there were some obvious differences in water use bet ween the two species, the quantitative differences were small with respect to the seasonal water budget The experience with the long-term application of the tissue heat balance (THB) method is discussed, (C) 1999 Elsevier Sci ence B.V. All rights reserved.