LAUSR

Abstract Deforestation and conversion to crop land and pasture in tropical regions has important effects on hydrological processes including increased flooding and reduced drought flows. We investigated: 1) differences in soil characteristics between four tropical land uses (forest, coffee, sugar cane and pasture), and 2) how hydrological processes differ between these four land uses. We measured bulk density, saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat), soil moisture content, catchment discharge and conducted infiltration, mass balance, and dye tracing tests at four catchments within the Reventazon watershed near Turrialba, Costa Rica at the point scale, the plot scale (1 m3), and the catchment scale (1–6 ha). While most of the soil characteristics between the field sites were similar, bulk density at the forest site (0.7 g cm− 3) was significantly lower than bulk density at the other field sites (1.0 g cm− 3). At the forest and coffee sites, Ksat (> 32 mm hr− 1) was at least twice the Ksat (  30%) than the coffee and forest (