Modelling how vegetation cover affects climate change impacts on streamflow timing and magnitude in the snowmelt‐dominated upper Tuolumne Basin, Sierra Nevada

Cristea, Nicoleta; Lundquist, Jessica D.; Loheide, Steven P.; Lowry, Christopher S.; Moore, Courtney E.

doi:10.1002/hyp.9909

Cited by 58 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 108 publications

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“…DHSVM is a physics‐based hydrologic model used extensively in the hydrological community for a wide variety of hydrologic applications, including mountain snow process modeling (Cao et al, ; Cristea et al, ; Storck & Lettenmaier, ; Sun et al, , ; Thyer et al, ). DHSVM simulates snow accumulation and melt with a two‐layer canopy submodel and a two‐layer ground (below canopy) snow submodel.…”

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Snow Parameters Estimation for Large‐Domain Hydrological Applications in the Western United States

et al. 2019

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In snow‐dominated regions, a key source of uncertainty in hydrologic prediction and forecasting is the magnitude and distribution of snow water equivalent (SWE). With ensemble simulations, this work demonstrates that SWE variability across the mountain ranges of the western United States (represented by 246 Snow Telemetry stations) can largely be captured at the daily time scale by a simple mass and energy‐balance snow model with four physically reasonable parameters—three snow albedo parameters and one snow temperature threshold for precipitation partitioning. The model skill is lower in the maritime Pacific Northwest where SWE variability is more sensitive to errors associated with simulated energy balance (e.g., downward radiation fluxes) and the temperature‐only precipitation partitioning approach. Poor model skill in high‐altitude, windy locations in the Northern Rockies can be attributed to precipitation undercatch and underrepresented wind processes. For the purpose of large‐domain hydrologic applications, regional snow parameters were developed for eight ecoregions characterized by a distinct hydroclimatic regime across the western United States. Results suggest that regionally coherent snow parameterizations are able to capture daily variations in SWE at most Snow Telemetry stations, suggesting that areas with a similar hydroclimate share a similar snow regime. While the three albedo parameters show limited spatial variability across all regions, the regional snow temperature threshold (Ts) shows marked spatial variation correlated with relative humidity; the Ts values increase from 0.2 °C in the higher‐humidity Pacific Northwest to 4.0 °C in the colder, lower‐humidity Rocky Mountains.

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Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Snow Parameters Estimation for Large‐Domain Hydrological Applications in the Western United States

et al. 2019

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“…There has been growing recognition over the last century that snow accumulation and ablation in mountain forest environments depend critically on forest structure (Broxton et al, ; Connaughton, ; Moore & McCaughey, ; Pomeroy, Parviainen, Hedstrom, & Gray, ; Varhola, Coops, Weiler, & Moore, ). Despite climate and topographic impacts of varying degrees, many studies found that forested areas, in contrast to open areas, commonly accumulate less snow and thus produce less water available for runoff, due mainly to canopy interception and evapotranspiration of up to 60% of accumulated snow (Cristea, Lundquist, Loheide, Lowry, & Moore, ; Hedstrom & Pomeroy, ; Marks, Kimball, Tingey, & Link, ; McCabe & Clark, ; McCabe, Hay, & Clark, ; Pomeroy et al, ; Regonda, Rajagopalan, Clark, & Pitlick, ; Stednick, ; Stewart, Cayan, & Dettinger, ; Troendle & King, ). Prior studies generally agree that sparser forest canopy advances melt due to reduced radiation attenuation (Link & Marks, ; Troendle & King, ; Varhola et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the functionality and streamflow impacts of explicitly modelling forest–snow interactions and canopy gaps in a distributed hydrologic model

Sun

Wigmosta

Zhou

et al. 2018

Hydrological Processes

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Many plot‐scale studies have shown that snow‐cover dynamics in forest gaps are distinctly different from those in open and continuously forested areas, and forest gaps have the potential to alter the magnitude and timing of snowmelt. However, the watershed‐level impacts of canopy gap treatment on streamflows are largely unknown. Here, we present the first research that explicitly assesses the impact of canopy gaps on seasonal streamflows and particularly late‐season low flows at the watershed scale. To explicitly model forest–snow interactions in canopy gaps, we made major enhancements to a widely used distributed hydrologic model, distributed hydrology soil vegetation model, with a canopy gap component that represents physical processes of snowpack evolution in the forest gap separately from the surrounding forest on the subgrid scale (within a grid typically 10–150 m). The model predicted snow water equivalent using the enhanced distributed hydrology soil vegetation model showed good agreement (R2 > 0.9) with subhourly snow water equivalent measurements collected from open, forested, and canopy gap sites in Idaho, USA. Compared with the original model that does not account for interactions between gaps and surrounding forest, the enhanced model predicted notably later melt in small‐ to medium‐size canopy gaps (the ratio of gap radius (r) to canopy height (h) ≤ 1.2), and snow melt rates exhibited great sensitivity to changing gap size in medium‐size gaps (0.5 ≤ r/h ≤ 1.2). We demonstrated the watershed‐scale implications of canopy gaps on streamflow in the snow‐dominated Chiwawa watershed, WA, USA. With 24% of the watershed drainage area (about 446 km2) converted to gaps of 60 m diameter, the mean annual 7‐day low flow was increased by 19.4% (i.e., 0.37 m3/s), and the mean monthly 7‐day low flows were increased by 13.5% (i.e., 0.26 m3/s) to 40% (i.e., 1.76 m3/s) from late summer through fall. Lastly, in practical implementation of canopy gaps with the same total gap areas, a greater number of distributed small gaps can have greater potential for longer snow retention than a smaller number of large gaps.

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“…On one hand, previous studies showed that vegetation affects snow accumulation by interception and sublimation, and affects snowmelt by alerting the energy balance of land surface [64][65][66]. However, the relationship between snow and vegetation is highly variable and complicated, depending on climatic, topographic and vegetation conditions [65,67,68]; On the other hand, vegetation modifies runoff yield mainly by interception and ET [69,70].…”

Section: Effects Of Climate and Land Cover Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Study of the Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Meltwater Contribution to the Total Runoff in the Upper Changjiang River Basin

Fang

Zhang

Niu

et al. 2017

Water

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Melt runoff (MR) contributes significantly to the total runoff in many river basins. Knowledge of the meltwater contribution (MCR, defined as the ratio of MR to the total runoff) to the total runoff benefits water resource management and flood control. A process-based land surface model, Noah-MP, was used to investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics of MR and MCR in the Upper Changjiang River (as known as Yangtze River) Basin (UCRB) located in southwestern China. The model was first calibrated and validated using snow cover fraction (SCF), runoff, and evapotranspiration (ET) data. The calibrated model was then used to perform two numerical experiments from 1981 to 2010: control experiment that considers MR and an alternative experiment that MR is removed. The difference between two experiments was used to quantify MR and MCR. The results show that in the entire UCRB, MCR was approximately 2.0% during the study period; however, MCR exhibited notable spatiotemporal variability. Four sub-regions over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) showed significant annual MCR ranging from 3.9% to 6.0%, while two sub-regions in the low plain regions showed negligible annual MCR. The spatial distribution of MCR was generally consistent with the distribution of glaciers and elevation distribution. Mann-Kendall (M-K) tests of the long-term annual MCR indicated that the four sub-regions in QTP exhibited increasing trends ranging from 0.01%/year to 0.21%/year during the study period but only one displayed statistically significant trend. No trends were found for the peak time (PT) of MR and MCR, in contrast, advancing trend were observed for the center time (CT) of MR, ranging from 0.01 months/year to 0.02 months/year. These trends are related to the changes of air temperature and precipitation in the study area.

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Modelling how vegetation cover affects climate change impacts on streamflow timing and magnitude in the snowmelt‐dominated upper Tuolumne Basin, Sierra Nevada

Cited by 58 publications

References 108 publications

Regional Snow Parameters Estimation for Large‐Domain Hydrological Applications in the Western United States

Regional Snow Parameters Estimation for Large‐Domain Hydrological Applications in the Western United States

Evaluating the functionality and streamflow impacts of explicitly modelling forest–snow interactions and canopy gaps in a distributed hydrologic model

Study of the Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Meltwater Contribution to the Total Runoff in the Upper Changjiang River Basin

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