Studies on Snow Redistribution by Wind and Forest, Snow-covered Area Depletion, and Frozen Soil Infiltration in Northern and Western Canada

Abstract

Important advances in our understanding of snow and frozen soil processes have been made, especially in regard to the transport and sublimation of blowing snow, interception and sublimation of snow in forest canopies, snow spatial distributions in complex environments, snowmelt in open environments and under forest canopies, advection of energy from bare ground to snow, snowcover depletion during melt, and heat and mass transfer during infiltration to unsaturated frozen mineral soils. These studies, conducted at the Division of Hydrology at the University of Saskatchewan, covered a range of northern environments including the tundra-taiga transition, the cordilleran sub-arctic, the southern boreal forest, and the northern prairie. Results from field research have led to the development and improvement of algorithms related to snow and infiltration processes, which have contributed to hydrologic and atmospheric models in the Mackenzie GEWEX Study.