皆伐が極端な洪水のリスクを18倍に:UBCの研究(Clear-cutting linked to 18-fold rise in extreme floods, UBC study finds)

2025-07-17 カナダ・ブリティッシュコロンビア大学 (UBC)

ブリティッシュコロンビア大学(UBC)の研究によると、森林の林地一括伐採(クリアカット)は、極端な洪水の発生頻度を最大18倍にし、その影響は40年以上継続することが分かった。米ノースカロライナ州の2つの流域で1950年代末に行われた伐採を分析した結果、日陰が多く水分を保持する北側斜面では、洪水が頻発し規模も大きくなった(通常70年に1度の洪水が9年に1度へ)。一方、南向き斜面ではほとんど影響がなかった。従来の単純な水文モデルでは、このような極端かつ不規則な洪水パターンを予測できず、確率的な解析が必要であることが示された。さらに、このモデルはB.C.州などで洪水リスクが高い地域の予測や、気候変動および土地利用変化が近年の洪水事象に与えた影響を評価する際にも有用である。政策面では、伐採の場所・方法・条件が洪水リスクに大きく関わるため、森林管理と水管理の統合的アプローチが求められている。

<関連情報>

確率論的フレームワークが明らかにした、雨環境における森林処理とピークフローの因果関係 Stochastic framework reveals the controls of forest treatment – peakflow causal relations in rain environment

Henry C. Pham, Younes Alila, Peter V. Caldwell
Journal of Hydrology  Available online: 15 June 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2025.133704

Graphical abstract

皆伐が極端な洪水のリスクを18倍に:UBCの研究(Clear-cutting linked to 18-fold rise in extreme floods, UBC study finds)

Highlights

  • Forest treatment may result in persistent changes to peakflows.
  • Effect of forest treatment on peakflow can increase with event size and record length.
  • Peakflow impacts should be inferred with stochastic considerations.
  • Stochastic inference is commonplace in some disciplines but not in forest hydrology.
  • Forests influence multiple hydrological factors simultaneously to affect peakflows.

Abstract

Decades of literature on forest treatment – peakflow relations have generated considerable disagreements and turned the topic into one regarded as enigmatic. Factors affecting peakflows are multiple and chancy and, hence, can only be investigated via a probabilistic approach. We analyze peakflow data using the peakflow frequency distribution framework in two pairs of control-treatment watersheds in the rain environment of an experimental forest in North Carolina. We demonstrate how a range of forest treatments can change the magnitude and frequency of all peakflows on record and how such effects can increase with increasing event size as a consequence of changes to the peakflow frequency distribution. Changes to the distribution’s mean (−0.2 to +47.4 %) and variance (−30.9 to +162.1 %) resulted in a range of effects from no significant impacts on peakflows to making larger peakflows becoming even larger (up to 105 % increase) and more frequent (up to 18 times more frequent). Changes to peakflows are attributed to treatment-induced suppression of evapotranspiration and changes to non-vegetative factors, which can alter the soil storage capacity, moisture available for runoff, and the efficiency of runoff arriving to the outlet. The dominant topographical aspect of the watershed, seasonal differences in storm types, extent to which the storm events are in-phase or out-of-phase with high antecedent soil moisture, and lagged runoff responses with watershed memory emerged as key indicators of the sensitivity of peakflows to forest treatment. The application of the stochastic framework in forest hydrology can help fully understand forest treatment – peakflows relations.

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