Assessing plot‐scale impacts of land use on overland flow generation in Central Panama

Land use in Panama has changed dramatically with ongoing deforestation and conversion to cropland and cattle pastures, potentially altering the soil properties that drive the hydrological processes of infiltration and overland flow. We compared plot‐scale overland flow generation between hillslopes in forested and actively cattle‐grazed watersheds in Central Panama. Soil physical and hydraulic properties, soil moisture and overland flow data were measured along hillslopes of each land‐use type. Soil characteristics and rainfall data were input into a simple, 1‐D representative model, HYDRUS‐1D, to simulate overland flow that we used to make inferences about overland flow response at forest and pasture sites. Runoff ratios (overland flow/rainfall) were generally higher at the pasture site, although no overall trends were observed between rainfall characteristics and runoff ratios across the two land uses at the plot scale. Saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) and bulk density were different between the forest and pasture sites (p