Impact of Forest Conversion to Agriculture on Hydrologic Regime in the Large Basin in Vietnam

Abstract

Deforestation due to agricultural land expansion occurred greatly during 1994 to 2005 with a high proportion of forests being converted into agriculture in the upstream Dong Nai river basin in Vietnam. Most of these conversions included expansions of coffee plantations in Dak Lak and Lam Dong provinces, which are in the world’s Robusta coffee production area. The aim of this study is to quantify the impact on the water cycle due to the conversion of forest to coffee plantations in a tropical humid climate region by the application of a hydrological model: soil and water assessment tool (SWAT). The model was calibrated with climate data from 1980–1994, validated with climate data from 1995–2010, and verified with statistical indicators such as Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), percent bias (PBIAS), and ratio of the root mean square error (RSR). The simulations indicated that forest conversions into agriculture (expansion of coffee plantations) had significantly increased surface runoff (SUR) while actual evapotranspiration (ET), soil water content (SW), and groundwater discharge (GW) decreased. These changes are mainly related to the decrease in infiltration and leaf area index (LAI) post land cover changes. However, the soil was not thoroughly destroyed after deforestation due to the replacement of the lost forest with crops and vegetation. Therefore, changes in infiltration were marginal and not sufficient to bring large changes in the annual flow. Higher reductions in ET and SW were proposed, resulting in reduced streamflow in the dry season at the basin where the proportion of agricultural land was higher than the forest cover. Besides the plantation expansion, which resulted in streamflow reductions in the dry season, an existing problem was over-irrigation of coffee plantations that could likely deplete groundwater resources. Hence, balancing economic benefits by coffee production and mitigating groundwater depletion issues should be prioritized for land use management in the study area.

Impacts of climate change and fruit tree expansion on key hydrological components at different spatial scales

“…Across the watershed (whole basin), the primary conversion pattern was shrubland and sparse-wood (natural forest) covering a fruit tree (artificial forest) (61.49%) in our study, which may reduce the leaf area index, causing evapotranspiration to weaken (Yang et al, 2014;Truong et al, 2022). In addition, the expansion of fruit trees in this study led to increased surface runoff and reduced underground runoff and infiltration in the watershed (whole basin), due to ground disturbances (e.g., land preparation, removing litterfall or vegetation) in planting fruit trees.…”

“…In southern Brazil, planting natural forests in the catchment had no significant effect on runoff in the first 2 years (Ferraz et al, 2021), while the planting of eucalyptus forests significantly reduced runoff in the initial 2 years (Iroumé et al, 2021). The Dong Nai River Basin in Vietnam converted natural forests to coffee plantations, significantly increasing surface runoff and reducing underground runoff (Truong et al, 2022).…”

Long-Term Monitoring and Research in Forest Hydrology: Towards Integrated Watershed Management

“…This Special Issue collected ten original contributions focused on forest hydrology based on long-term data and integrated watershed management. Two of them were developed in China [1,2] and Japan [3,4], while the rest were from the United States [5], Korea [6], Brazil [7], Vietnam [8], Indonesia [9], and Slovakia [10].…”

“…Topic 1 comprises eight publications, including various scales, such as global [2], large catchment [8], natural lake [4], experimental catchments [5,9], experimental plots [1,3], and simulations [6].…”

“…Truong et al [8] quantified the impact on the water cycle caused by the conversion of forests to coffee plantations in a tropical humid climate region by the application of a soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) hydrological model in the Dong Nai River Basin, Vietnam. They indicated that forest conversion into agriculture significantly increased surface runoff, while actual evapotranspiration, soil water content, and groundwater discharge decreased.…”