Forest–water interactions: a multilingual perspective through six historical vignettes

The topic of forest–water interactions has a lengthy and fascinating history. Yet historical work in many languages remains unknown to most researchers. Using the primary literature in French, German, Czech, Japanese, Russian, and Turkish, this paper examines the pretext and describes notable examples of forest–water interactions research in each of the above six languages through historical vignettes that are of relevance today. For example, the French vignette focuses on the search for the hydrological role of forests, while the Russian vignette conveys an interesting example of phytoremediation and the role of evapotranspiration in decreasing malaria risk. In conjunction with a timeline for historical context, along with the identification of some seminal papers, these vignettes convey the important hydrological work of these earlier researchers, bringing some largely unrecognized work to light, thereby illuminating the historical scientific development of forest–water interactions and giving rightful credit to those pioneers who conducted the work.