Oceans vs Forests - which evaporates more water

Question

Which evaporates more water? 1m2 of open water or 1 m2 forest? What's the difference in amount of water evaporates? I know the answer is probably complicated depending on wind speed, humidity, type of forest, and so on. But generally speaking...

After all, there're more leaf area in the forest to potentially evaporate more water.

Answer 1

Hi Ong L.,

Interesting question. amenable to internet search and anaysis, did you try?

from https://industrialheatingsystems.com/How-calculate-heat-loss.html , water has passive evaporative chill of:

at 90F, 80 Btu ft^-2 hr^-1 :* 1 lb H2O vap (970 Btu)^-1 ( c03.apogee.net › mvc › home › hes › land ) * 454 g lb^-1 * 1 mol (18g)^-1 * 10.89 ft^2 m^-2 * 1 hr (3600s)^-1 = 0.006 mol m^-2 s^-1

For a forest in NE China, Tilia amurensis had 95.1 mol m^-2 s^-1 , ref. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2019.00058/full

Tells you something about the water transport capacity of trees, doesn't it? About 10000x passive water surface!

-- Cheers, -- Mr. d.