Snow accumulation and ablation response to changes in forest structure and snow surface albedo after attack by mountain pine beetle

Winkler, Rita; Boon, Sarah; Zimonick, Barbara; Spittlehouse, Dave

doi:10.1002/hyp.9574

Cited by 32 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Over the basin, the results showed that FGE was reduced in late June 2013; an early June flood would have generated larger volume (+15%), and an early May flood would have generated higher peak discharge (+13%). Although the results showed that 'hotspots' such as forest clearings could generate more runoff in spring leading to higher flood water yields with greater cleared area, consistent with modelling forest removal effects on peak flow in spring , heavy rainfall events in May have been relatively rare so far in the region (Harder et al, 2015;Liu et al, 2016;Whitfield and Pomeroy, 2016). This helps to explain why forest management practices such as clear-cutting caused small or no impact on peak streamflow or timing at Marmot Creek (Harder et al, 2015;Neill, 1980).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 61%

“…The results from flood simulations of changing forest canopy and soil moisture storage capacity show that removing all forest canopy alone had minimal impacts on peak flood discharge and flow volume. This simulation might be similar to impacts of forest disease or low intensity wildfire (Fauria and Johnson, , ; Whitfield and Pomeroy, ; Winkler et al, ), and the results are very different from an examination of peak flow change with forest cover removal when peak flows are because of spring snowmelt (Pomeroy et al, ). The difference between this forest rainfall–runoff event and a snowmelt event is most likely because of the flood precipitation being two orders of magnitude greater than typical canopy interception storage capacities and the rainfall–runoff mechanisms that were dominant in the forested ecozones which differ from the snowmelt runoff mechanisms examined by Pomeroy et al ().…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Impact of antecedent conditions on simulations of a flood in a mountain headwater basin

Fang

Pomeroy

2016

Hydrol. Process.

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A devastating flood struck Southern Alberta in late June 2013, with much of its streamflow generation in the Front Ranges of the Rocky Mountains, west of Calgary. To better understand streamflow generation processes and their sensitivity to initial conditions, a physically based hydrological model was developed using the Cold Regions Hydrological Modelling platform (CRHM) to simulate the flood for the Marmot Creek Research Basin (~9.4 km2). The modular model includes major cold and warm season hydrological processes including snow redistribution, sublimation, melt, runoff over frozen and unfrozen soils, evapotranspiration, subsurface runoff on hillslopes, groundwater recharge and discharge and streamflow routing. Uncalibrated simulations were conducted for eight hydrological years and generally matched streamflow observations well, with a NRMSD of 52%, small model bias (−3%) and a Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 0.71. The model was then used to diagnose the responses of hydrological processes in 2013 flood from different ecozones in Marmot Creek: alpine, treeline, montane forest and large and small forest clearings to better understand spatial variations in the flood runoff generation mechanisms. To examine the sensitivity to antecedent conditions, ‘virtual’ flood simulations were conducted using a week (17 to 24 June 2013) of flood meteorology imposed on the meteorology of the same period in other years (2005 to 2012), or switched with the meteorology of one week in different months (May to July) of 2013. Sensitivity to changing precipitation and land cover was assessed by varying the precipitation amount during the flood and forest cover and soil storage capacity in forest ecozone. The results show that runoff efficiency increases rapidly with antecedent snowpack and soil moisture storage with the highest runoff response to rainfall from locations in the basin where there are recently melted or actively melting snowpacks and resulting high soil moisture or frozen soils. The impact of forest canopy on flooding is negligible, but flood peak doubles if forest canopy removal is accompanied by 50% reduction in water storage capacity in the basin. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of antecedent conditions on simulations of a flood in a mountain headwater basin

Fang

Pomeroy

2016

Hydrol. Process.

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“…Even as the ESMs project increasing precipitation and temperature, we see the variability in responses through the cascade of scale and land cover variability. This finding is consistent with other studies that observed that variability (forest cover composition and topography) in the area and size of forest-shrub conversion can buffer responses of streamflow or evapotranspiration shifts from climate change (Winkler et al, 2014;Caldwell et al, 2016).…”

Section: Changing Streamflow and Water Balancessupporting

confidence: 93%

Climate-driven disturbances in the San Juan River sub-basin of the Colorado River

Bennett

Bohn

Solander

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Accelerated climate change and associated forest disturbances in the southwestern USA are anticipated to have substantial impacts on regional water resources. Few studies have quantified the impact of both climate change and land cover disturbances on water balances on the basin scale, and none on the regional scale. In this work, we evaluate the impacts of forest disturbances and climate change on a headwater basin to the Colorado River, the San Juan River watershed, using a robustly calibrated (Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency 0.76) hydrologic model run with updated formulations that improve estimates of evapotranspiration for semiarid regions. Our results show that future disturbances will have a substantial impact on streamflow with implications for water resource management. Our findings are in contradiction with conventional thinking that forest disturbances reduce evapotranspiration and increase streamflow. In this study, annual average regional streamflow under the coupled climate-disturbance scenarios is at least 6-11 % lower than those scenarios accounting for climate change alone; for forested zones of the San Juan River basin, streamflow is 15-21 % lower. The monthly signals of altered streamflow point to an emergent streamflow pattern related to changes in forests of the disturbed systems. Exacerbated reductions of mean and low flows under disturbance scenarios indicate a high risk of low water availability for forested headwater systems of the Colorado River basin. These findings also indicate that explicit representation of land cover disturbances is required in modeling efforts that consider the impact of climate change on water resources.

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“…Mean annual temperature is 3.3°C, with mean monthly temperatures ranging from À7.1°C in December to 13.9°C in July. The Köppen climate classification for the region is Dfc (sub-arctic) while the provincial Biogeoclimatic Ecosystem Classification designation (BC Ministry of Forests and Range, 2008) is Montane Spruce dry mild variant (Winkler et al, 2014).…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal persistence of throughfall heterogeneity below and between the canopies of juvenile lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta)

Carlyle-Moses

Lishman

2015

Hydrological Processes

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Abstract:From May to October 2010, throughfall associated with 38 rainfall events in three below-canopy zones (inner canopy, midcanopy and canopy periphery) of nine juvenile lodgepole pine trees and in open areas between canopies was measured along north, south, east and west transects radiating from each tree bole. Median cumulative throughfall (%) significantly differed among the canopy zones under differing rain depth classes and was negatively correlated with tree size metrics, but only for certain combinations of canopy zones and rain depth classes. Although median cumulative throughfall (%) was negatively correlated with canopy cover fraction when all below-canopy gauges were considered, this relationship only held true for the inner-canopy and mid-canopy zones under relatively small rain depth classes. Additionally, cumulative throughfall (%) was often dependent on transect direction, with event throughfall showing a dependence on the direction of storm origin. Throughfall coefficient of variation (%) also varied by zone and was a function of not only rainfall depth but also other storm variables such as the maximum 30-min rainfall intensity and the number and duration of intra-storm breaks. Temporal persistence of throughfall was assessed using time stability plots and Spearman rank coefficients of rain event and depth class pairings for all gauges and by canopy zone, and the influence of temporal lag and meteorological variables on persistence was assessed. The implications of our findings on throughfall sampling and for future ecohydrological studies in juvenile lodgepole pine and similar stands are discussed.

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Snow accumulation and ablation response to changes in forest structure and snow surface albedo after attack by mountain pine beetle

Cited by 32 publications

References 21 publications

Impact of antecedent conditions on simulations of a flood in a mountain headwater basin

Impact of antecedent conditions on simulations of a flood in a mountain headwater basin

Climate-driven disturbances in the San Juan River sub-basin of the Colorado River

Temporal persistence of throughfall heterogeneity below and between the canopies of juvenile lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta)

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