Resumen
Forested catchments throughout the world are known for producing high quality water for human use. In the 20th Century, experimental forest catchment studies played a key role in studying the processes contributing to high water quality. The hydrologic processes investigated on these paired catchments have provided the science base for examining water quality responses to natural disturbances such as wildfire, insect outbreaks, and extreme hydrologic events, and human-induced disturbances such as timber harvesting, site preparation, prescribed fires, fertilizer applications, pesticide usage, rainfall acidification, and mining. This paper compares and contrasts the paired catchment approach with landscape-level water resource monitoring to highlight the information on hydrologic processes provided by the paired catchment approach that is not provided by the broad-brush landscape monitoring.