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Streamflow response to forest management

Nature volume 578, pages E12–E15 (2020)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 17 June 2019

Arising from: Evaristo, J. & McDonnell, J. J. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1306-0 (2019); Addendum Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1586-4 (2019); Author Correction Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1588-2 (2019); Retraction Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-1945-1 (2020).

Forests play a key part in the water cycle, so both planting and removing forests can affect streamflow. In a recent Article1, Evaristo and McDonnell used a gradient-boosted-tree model to conclude that streamflow response to forest removal is predominantly controlled by the potential water storage in the landscape, and that removing the world’s forests would contribute an additional 34,098 km3 yr−1 to streamflow worldwide, nearly doubling global river flow. Here we report several problems with Evaristo and McDonnell’s1 database, their model, and the extrapolation of their results to the continental and global scale. The main results of the paper1 remain unsubstantiated, because they rely on a database with multiple errors and a model that fails validation tests.

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Fig. 1: Split-sample validation tests of gradient-boosted-tree model fitted to forest clearing and planting data.
Fig. 2: Distributions of potential storage, compared to the uniform distribution used to estimate its influence in Evaristo and McDonnell’s analysis1.

Data availability

All of the data analysed here are available as described in the data availability and code availability statements of ref. 1, or from the cited references.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    James W. Kirchner, Wouter R. Berghuijs & Scott T. Allen

  2. Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    James W. Kirchner

  3. Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Scott T. Allen

  4. Department of Civil Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Markus Hrachowitz & Rolf Hut

  5. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

    Donna M. Rizzo

Authors
  1. James W. Kirchner
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Contributions

All authors discussed the issues raised here, and contributed to the writing. J.W.K. analysed the data and led the writing effort.

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Correspondence to James W. Kirchner.

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Kirchner, J.W., Berghuijs, W.R., Allen, S.T. et al. Streamflow response to forest management. Nature 578, E12–E15 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-1940-6

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