Abstract
This chapter presents a history of the interdisciplinary field focused on improving our understanding of the first step in the terrestrial hydrologic cycle: precipitation partitioning by vegetation. We describe the origins of interest, rooted in observations from “The Father of Botany,” Theophrastus (350 BCE) and synthesize the early formal hydrologic and biogeochemical research (~1800–1917) that provided the foundation for modern precipitation partitioning investigation. To examine the field’s publication and citation trends over the past century (1918–2017), a meta-analysis of precipitation partitioning research sampled from the Thompson Reuter’s Web of Science is presented and discussed. Finally, a summary of research published on this topic through September 2018 (when this chapter was written) is used to discuss broad future directions as well as to introduce the overall structure of this book.
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Van Stan II, J.T., Friesen, J. (2020). Precipitation Partitioning, or to the Surface and Back Again: Historical Overview of the First Process in the Terrestrial Hydrologic Pathway . In: Van Stan, II, J., Gutmann, E., Friesen, J. (eds) Precipitation Partitioning by Vegetation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29702-2_1
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