The measurement and modelling of stemflow in an alpine Myricaria squamosa community

Stemflow is an important hydrological process of rainfall partitioning, but it has rarely been studied in the alpine riparian shrub Myricaria squamosa in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. This study aimed to measure and model the stemflow of the unstudied M. squamosa and to identify the key controlling factors of stemflow yield. Correlations and stepwise regression analysis between stemflow and five meteorological and ten biological factors indicated that the rainfall amount and the aboveground biomass were the best variables for modelling and predicting stemflow. We used the best model to estimate annual and stand stemflow, as well as rainfall threshold for stemflow generation. Annual stemflow accounted for 2.3 to 10.2% of the annual rainfall amount, varying with different vegetation coverage and leaf area index. The annual stemflow percentage increased linearly with the annual total rainfall amount of events > 7.3 mm. For M. squamosa stands, branches with diameters of 10 to 25 mm were less frequent but contributed much more stemflow than branches with diameters smaller than 10 mm. The stemflow percentage increased sharply with increasing rainfall amounts when the rainfall amounts were less than 4, 8 or 13 mm for the M. squamosa stands with coverage of 32.6, 47.6 or 56.1%, respectively, but increased gently when the rainfall amounts were greater than these values. The rainfall threshold for stemflow generation decreased as the branch aboveground biomass increased, and the estimated median value of the rainfall threshold was 0.8 mm for M. squamosa stands, with a range of 3.0 to 0.4 mm for branches weighing 10 to 300 g, respectively. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.