FOREST FLOWS - REAL TIME MONITORING OF WATER QUANTITY AND QUALITY SPATIO-TEMPORAL DYNAMICS IN PLANTED FORESTS

Clean, fresh water is essential for life and forests. As land-use intensification and climate change place growing pressure on water resources, we need to understand the role that planted forests can play in managing water sustainably. However, our current knowledge on where and when forests use and release water is not sufficiently advanced to inform and support management practices. The 5-year Forest Flows programme has been funded by the New Zealand government and proposes to use advanced and novel remote-sensing and sensor-network technology in developing a model that will revolutionise the way forest hydrology is approached, both in New Zealand and internationally. This manuscript provides an overview of the approach of the Forest Flows programme and the unique fusion of terrestrial and remote-sensing technologies that will provide accurate predictions of hydrological fluxes in planted forests.