Abstract:The hydrological effect of forest recovery is receiving renewed interest globally because information on forest carbon-water relationship is critically needed to support carbon management through reforestation and sustainable water management. In Northeastern China, summer (June to August) streamflow accounts for about 50% of total annual streamflow and is vital to water supply and management in the region. Understanding how forest recovery may affect streamflow is important to both reforestation campaign and long-term water sustainability. In this study, we analysed 33 years of summer hydrologic data from two comparable small-scale watersheds located in the Xiaoxing'anling, Northeastern China. Time series analysis and two graphic methods (double mass curve and flow duration curve) with statistical testing as well as longterm data on forest cover changes and climate were used. Our results show that the significant streamflow reduction as a result of reforestation occurred when forest cover reached 70% or 10 years after planting. After forest cover reached 85%, water reduction became stabilized. The accumulative streamflow reduction in 2002 reached 8Ð61% of the total accumulative streamflow. Among those water reduced, high flows (from 5 to 25 percentiles) were mostly affected, demonstrating that northeastern forests have an important role in reducing high flows. Implications of these results are discussed in the context of climate change, reforestation and water resource management.

In this study, the vegetation dynamics in Heilongjiang province and their relationships with climate variability were assessed using normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and meteorological datasets from 1981 to 2003. The conclusions from our results are as follows: (1) After 1981, vegetation cover, as indicated by the NDVI, exhibited an insignificant increasing tendency. However, the inter-annual variations of the NDVI showed apparent spatial differentiations.(2) The inter-annual changes of the NDVI were different from season to season. The spring and autumn NDVI values increased, while the summer and winter NDVI decreased. (3) The annual NDVI was significantly correlated with precipitation. Thus, as compared to temperature, precipitation was the dominant climatic factor affecting the vegetation dynamics in Heilongjiang province. (4) The trend in the NDVI showed a marked homogeneity corresponding to regional and seasonal variations in climate. Additionally, land use changes also play an important role in influencing the NDVI trends over some regions. All of these findings will enrich our knowledge of the natural forces that impact the stability of boreal ecosystems and provide a scientific basis for the environmental management in Heilongjiang province in response to climate change and human activities.

Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica is one of the main species to be afforested in deserts of China. But little work has been carried out on the canopy interception loss of this plant species. For researching the canopy interception loss of a natural P. sylvestris forest, we observed the gross precipitation, gross snowfall, throughfall and stemflow in a sample plot at the Forest Ecosystem Research Station of Mohe in the Great Khingan Mountains of Northeast China from July 2012 to September 2013. Considering the spatial variability of the throughfall, we increased the area rather than the number of collector and randomly relocated them once a week. The results demonstrated that the throughfall, stemflow, and derived estimates of rainfall and snowfall interception loss during the main rainy and snowy seasons were 77.12%±5.70%, 0.80%, 22.08%±5.51% and 21.39%±1.21% of the incident rainfall or snowfall, respectively. The stemflow didn't occur unless the accumulated rainfall reached up to 4.8 mm. And when the gross precipitation became rich enough, the stemflow increased with increasing tree diameters. Our analysis revealed that throughfall was not observed when rainfall was no more than 0.99 mm, indicating that the canopy storage capacity at saturation was 0.99 mm for P. sylvestris forest.

A simplified water balance model in conjunction with an evapotranspiration (ET) model and cumulative forest cover data were used to quantify the changes in annual water yield in response to reforestation in a large watershed, northeast China. Cumulative forest cover increased by 22 %, leading to a significant decrease in estimated annual water yield. Reforestation increased ET (P = 0.0144), resulting in a remarkable decrease (P = 0.0001) in estimated annual water yield according to the water balance model. Reforestation increased ET by 33 mm and decreased annual water yield by 38 mm per decade. The effect of reforestation on annual water yield can be quantified using a simplified water balance model in a large watershed, although our reforestation area was small (about 20 %) in relation to the total watershed area.

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