A note on estimating urban roof runoff with a forest evaporation model.

The article discusses a study which aims to estimate measurements of the average runoff from the roofs of six houses in an urban environment. A model developed for estimating the evaporation of rainfall intercepted by forest canopies was applied using values of the mean rates of wet canopy evaporation and rainfall derived for forests and an estimate of the roof storage capacity derived from data collected from a previous study. The study concludes that the process of evaporation from an urban roof is sufficiently similar to that from a forest canopy for forest evaporation models to be used to give a useful estimate of urban roof runoff.