HR: 14:45h
AN: CG13B-04    [Abstracts]
TI: Determining Snowmelt Contributions to the Water Balance in a Heterogeneous Alpine Watershed: Lake O'Hara Research Basin
AU: * Hood, J
EM: jlhood@ucalgary.ca
AF: Department of Geoscience University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada
AU: Hayashi, M
EM: hayashi@ucalgary.ca
AF: Department of Geoscience University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada
AB: The rivers flowing from the Rocky Mountains are an important source of water for much of the population in western Canada. Small-scale hydrological studies in mountain headwater catchments are necessary to better understand the timing of source water contributions (glacier melt, snow, rain) and the surface and subsurface pathways by which these waters reach mountain rivers. A hydrological study in the 5-km2 Opabin watershed, within the Lake O'Hara Research Basin, Yoho National Park is addressing these research needs through comprehensive hydrological monitoring and geophysical investigations. A key component of this work is assessing the seasonal and daily contributions of snowmelt to the water balance through a combination of field data collection and snowmelt modeling. Field data includes snow-water-equivalent surveys at the peak of accumulation and bi-weekly during the melt season, meteorological data from automatic weather stations, and oblique-angle photographs for snow-cover-area depletion monitoring. A distributed meteorological dataset is derived for this high-relief watershed, including terrain effects on incoming solar radiation. This dataset is subsequently used to drive a one-dimensional snowmelt model that is run in a distributed fashion for the melt season only. The results and challenges of determining snowmelt inputs for the 2008 season will be presented.
DE: 0736 Snow (1827, 1863)
DE: 0764 Energy balance
DE: 0798 Modeling
DE: 1804 Catchment
SC: Canadian Geophysical Union [CG]
MN: 2009 Joint Assembly