I have read the entire article. And what the forest experts are saying is that at an individual/local level you may not benefit from more rain if you plant trees because the trees will remove water from your shamba and the water vapour will be transported by wind to go and fall as rain in another area. In other words your trees will leave your shamba with a negative water budget. Did you see the paragraph below in that article?



Therefore if you want more rain in your shamba in mt kenya you should actually encourage ngilu to plant more trees in kitui......or to ban charcoal burning

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Different types of trees have varied characteristics. If you own marshy land then eucalyptus trees would be ok because they would capture the water and release it to the ecosystem.

Benefits of forest cover are at a wider geographical scope. A tree planted in Limuru might not bring rain there but will increase rainfall in Kitui for example. Rain falling in Limuru might also be a result of forest cover in Nandi hills.

Also the atmosphere above an area with an extensive tree cover is cooler and more humid and therefore any passing clouds condense faster and result in rain. That is why they say trees attract rain.

The vegetation is very important in making water percolate into the soil. When there is no vegetation cover, most of the rainwater flows downstream causing flash floods and erosion. But when you have a forest, the forest environment acts like a giant sponge which absorbs the rainfall and then releases the water pole pole and that is how we have permanent rivers coming from the forests. That is why forests are called water catchment areas. Therefore though you will still get seasonal/relief rainfall after clearing forests, the water storage characteristic is lost and therefore rivers dry out only flowing during the wet season because the "forest sponge" is gone.

So using these illustrations, can we say water/rain is only transformed from an area(form) to another and not necessarily lost. i.e ukame in one area could be a blessing in another...something similar to the first law of thermodynamics(energy)