A widely employed water supply catchment model and other empirical insights suggest that logging may contribute to lower water yields

In an earlier study published in Science of the Total Environment (Taylor et al., 2019), we used an established hydrological model (based on what is known as the Kuzcera curve), to analyse the impacts of logging on water yields in a major watershed – the Thomson water supply catchment - in the Central Highlands of Victoria, south-eastern Australia. We demonstrated that under some plausible climate change projections, the impacts of logging on catchment water yields may exceed those resulting from climate change (Taylor et al., 2019). In a Letter to the Editor (2024), it was argued there were problems with our analysis and, as a result, if the Thomson water supply catchment was subject to logging and thinning such actions may be “water positive”. While we acknowledge a lack of availability in forest and hydrological field inventory data across the Thomson catchment, as well as variability in differing modelled results, we outline some important reasons our original conclusions that logging may lead to reduced water yields remain vali.