Forests & Water/REF/03 Forests and Integrated Water Resources Management, DFID Forestry Research on Forest and Water Interactions

The public perception that forests are, in all circumstances, necessarily good for the water environment, that they increase rainfall, increase runoff, regulate flows, reduce erosion, reduce floods, “sterilize ” water supplies and improve water quality, has long been questioned by the scientific community. Although this simplistic public perception has been debated since the nineteenth centur