Deforestation, Cloud Formation, and Hydrological Coupling of Lowland and Montane Systems in the Tropics

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The project will develop understanding of the linkage of tropical deforestation with cumulus cloud formation and orographically generated cloud-banks in environmentally complex terrain. Advancing hydrologic predictions in regions undergoing land-use and land cover change from the use of remotely sensed cloud observations will be an important project objective. The research is motivated by the need to understand and model land-surface interactions and cloud connections in regional hydrologic cycling in terrain regions such as the tropical montane cloud forest ecosystems of northern Costa Rica. The research will involve regional atmospheric modeling, remote sensing of land-surface characteristics and cloud distribution, and on-site monitoring of soil moisture and cloud-base heights. Drs. Welch, Han, and Lawton (University of Alabama, Huntsville) expect project activities to shed insight into causes of lowland deforestation, watershed management, ecosystem functioning, and biodiversity conservation in mountainous parts of the tropics. The project is supported by NSF's Water and Energy: Atmospheric, Vegetative, and Earth (WEAVE) interactions program, which seeks to improve understanding of the Earth's hydrologic and energy cycles to support better assessments of the potential impact of human activities on those cycles and on the climate system, in particular.