who reported increases of generally less than 10% after the removal of 50% of the basal area. Therefore, a reduction of forest structure in a dense forest could produce a greater effect than a comparable reduction in a less dense stand. However, the absence of significant differences found between low-intensity treatments and the control indicates that a minor silvicultural intervention (in our case, a reduction of 26.2% in basal area) is not enough to increase the water reaching the soil surface via throughfall. This implies that there is an optimum value of forest structure reduction of between 41% and 26.2% of basal area (from moderate- to low-intensity treatments) to attain a significant increase in throughfall.