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      Unloading on intercepted snow in conifer forests

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      Date
      2010-08
      Author
      MacDonald, James P
      Type
      Thesis
      Degree Level
      Masters
      Metadata
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      Abstract
      Snowfall interception is particularly important to the hydrology of forested cold regions. Unloading of intercepted snow controls the snow available for interception loss due to sublimation from that held in the canopy. This thesis seeks to determine the factors that affect the magnitude and timing of unloading at the forest-stand scale. A field program was established that measured interception and unloading at a forest-stand scale using a series of hanging lysimeters and a 7 m tall spruce tree suspended, in-situ, on a load-cell. Meteorological conditions including snowfall, wind speed, air temperature, and incoming radiation were recorded above and below the forest canopy. Unloading did not behave as described by current unloading models. It was observed to be triggered by occurrences of wind gusts or melt conditions within the canopy but no trends were found in the measurements that could be used to predict the onset of unloading from gusts or air temperature alone. An association between intercepted snow sublimation and unloading was found and this relationship was further found to be an exponential function of air temperature. An expression based on this empirical model can be used to calculate unloading as a function of sublimation rate in hydrological models or to calculate unloading directly as a function of canopy snow load and air temperature.
      Degree
      Master of Science (M.Sc.)
      Department
      Geography
      Program
      Geography
      Supervisor
      Pomeroy, John
      Committee
      Spence, Chris; Westbrooke, Cherie; Maule, Charles; Aitken, Alec
      Copyright Date
      August 2010
      URI
      http://hdl.handle.net/10388/etd-09302010-145706
      Subject
      hydrology
      water resources
      climate
      snow
      meteorology
      forest
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      • Graduate Theses and Dissertations
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