What are the effects of forests on the hydrological cycle in connection with the changing climate?

In the effort to successfully sustain the forests in Hungary: the most important limitation factors are the available water sources and the climate conditions. As the expected effects of the climate change (e.g.: decrease of precipitation in the vegetation period, the increase in frequency of the extreme intensity precipitation events, increase of the length of drought periods, increase of the evapotranspiration due to the mean temperature increase) this will be an increasing challenge to the forest managers in future. The forest stands have an ability to reduce the temperature, increase the humidity and soften the drying effect of the strong wind. So, the protection of our forest stands will become the one of most important tasks in our future. Thus, the research of the interconnection between the forests and the hydrological cycles is an urgent meanwhile difficult task due to the complexity of these systems. Our recent work presents the main conclusions of the recent drought period by our hydro-meteorological system.

Acknowledgements:

This article was made in frame of the project TKP2021-NKTA-43 which has been implemented with the support provided by the Ministry of Innovation and Technology of Hungary (successor: Ministry of Culture and Innovation of Hungary) from the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, financed under the TKP2021-NKTA funding scheme.