At school, we learnt about the water cycle, from evaporation of the oceans to rain through clouds, slowed down by mountains and forests.
What is less well known is that this big cycle actually accounts for less than half of the redistribution of water.
There is a much lesser-known secret water cycle that is responsible for most of the water circulation: condensation within the forest itself.
In a healthy forest, with several layers of trees, shrubs and ground cover, and where the soil is rich in humus, each layer retains a large part of the evaporation under its leaves by condensation and redistributes it downwards, where the humus in the soil acts like a sponge.
What’s more, in a healthy forest, the trees form a real underground network through the mycorrhizal fungi that connect them and allow them to transfer information, nutrients and water.