Relaciones agua-suelo-vegetación.-Influencia de la altura de la cubierta vegetal en la variación de la energía cinética de las gotas de lluvia interceptadas

Abstract

ABSTRACT The erosive capacity of raindrops is function of mass (size) and terminal velocity. Drop mass and velocity govern the inherent erosivity of rainfall through kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is a very important property of the rainfall because it is one of the sources of energy in the process of water erosion. Vegetative canopy intercepts the raindrops and causes a variation on this rainfall kinetic energy due to modifications of diameters and velocities distributions. If the height of canopy is enough, the bigger intercepted drops could achieve high velocities and their kinetic energies can increase. In this paper a quantitative evaluation of the increase of kinetic energy of intercepted drops is obtained and it is showed that this kinetic energy increases exponentially with vegetation height.