Areal water equivalents for prairie snowcovers by centralized sampling
Title | Areal water equivalents for prairie snowcovers by centralized sampling |
Publication Type | Conference Proceedings |
Year of Conference | 1976 |
Authors | Steppuhn, H. |
Conference Name | 44th Annual Western Snow Conference |
Series Title | Proceedings of the 44th Annual Western Snow Conference |
Date Published | April 1976 |
Publisher | Western Snow Conference |
Conference Location | Calgary, Alberta |
Keywords | Snow cover analysis |
Abstract | Accurate estimates of water quantities stored as snow covering prairie lands can improve runoff forecasting and agricultural management. Centralized sampling offers an efficient shortcut for determining mean, error-qualified, areal water equivalents in shallow snowcovers. This method reduces sample size and retains accuracy (1) by exploiting the close relationship between rural landscapes and snowcover distribution, (2) by separating sampling for snow depth from sampling for verical density, and (3) by sampling for density selectively based on a central depth statistic. Snow data for 1972-75 from 23 areal landscapes in Saskatchewan showed that reducing sample numbers by 1/5 or less resulted in average deviation from the mean areal density of 3.3, 3.1, or 4.8% for the mean, mode,and median depth statistic, repectively. Centralized sampling will comlement any snow meaurement technique, including ground-based tube-coring and serial gamma-sensing. |
URL | sites/westernsnowconference.org/PDFs/1976Steppuhn.pdf |