Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Forest Ecology and Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foreco The effect of wildfire on the structure and water balance of a high conservation value Hualo (Nothofagus glauca (Phil.) Krasser.) forest in central Chile Don A. White a,b,c, ⁎ , Francisco Balocchi-Contreras d,e , Richard P. Silberstein f,g , Pablo Ramírez de Arellano d a Whitegum Forest and Natural Resources, PO Box 3269, Midland, WA 6056, Australia b School of Veterinary and Life Sciences, Murdoch University, Murdoch, WA 6150, Australia c ARC Training Centre for Forest Value, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tas. 7001, Australia d Bioforest SA, Camino a Coronel s/n, Coronel, Chile e Departamento de Recursos Hídricos, Universidad de Concepción, Chillán, Chile f Hydrological and Environmental Scientific Solutions, Subiaco, Western Australia, Australia g Edith Cowan University, Centre for Ecosystem Management, School of Science, Joondalup, Western Australia, Australia ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Deciduous Transpiration Interception Soil evaporation Evapotranspiration ABSTRACT The structure and water balance of an N. glauca forest were measured in the year before and for two years after the wildfires of January 2017. The aim was to investigate the relationship between changes in structure and in transpiration, canopy interception, soil evaporation and their proportional contribution to evapotranspiration. This forest recovered rapidly after the fire. After two months there was evidence of resprouting from ground level in all species and after four months regrowth was visible in the crown of N. glauca. One year after the fire the leaf area index of the overstorey had recovered by about 1.5 units and about 70% of all the trees were supporting live growth either at the base or in the crown. The overstorey sapwood area was 5 m 2 ha -1 after the fire, down 60% from the 13 m 2 ha -1 measured before the fire. In the year before the fire the total transpiration, canopy interception and soil evaporation were respectively 210 mm, 258 mm and 46 mm (evapotranspiration of 514 mm). In the first and second year after fire tran- spiration was 78 and 127, canopy interception was 145 and 85 mm and soil evaporation was 125 and 143 mm. Compared to before the fire, transpiration after the fire was reduced by 63%, canopy interception was reduced by 44% and soil evaporation increased approximately three-fold. The combined effect of all these changes in the partitioning of rainfall was a 33% reduction in evapotranspiration. The reduction in transpiration was in pro- portion with the reduction in sapwood area and was partially offset by a threefold increase in soil evaporation. Two years after the fire the water balance of this forest had substantially recovered and at the current rate of recovery will be at pre-fire levels in 2021. 1. Introduction In January of 2017 a series of wildfires burned a total area of more than 550, 000 ha of mostly forested land, predominantly in the region of central Chile between the cities of Santiago and Concepción (Gómez- González et al., 2018). Of the total area burned in these fires, 223,605 ha were plantations of Pinus or Eucalyptus and 60,995 ha were native forest (De la Barrera et al., 2018). This event was unprecedented in the post-Columbian history of Chile, but the frequency and intensity of forest fires is forecast to increase for this region under climate change (Pollmann and Veblen, 2004). The fires of January 2017 therefore present an opportunity to study the response of Chilean forests and contribute a basis for their improved management in a drying and warming climate. One of the most obvious and important effects of fire is to reduce vegetation and this has the potential to profoundly alter the partitioning of rainfall and the amount and quality of streamflow that flows from forested catchments. The forests burned in Central Chile in early 2017 were concentrated in, but not limited to, the coastal mountain range between Santiago and Concepción. This part of Chile is home to Roble-Hualo forests which are https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2020.118219 Received 23 December 2019; Received in revised form 1 May 2020; Accepted 6 May 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: whitegumfnrm@gmail.com (D.A. White). Forest Ecology and Management 472 (2020) 118219 0378-1127/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T