Impact of the Spatial and Temporal Variability of Snowpack Condition on Internal Liquid Water Fluxes

The seasonal snow cover plays an important hydrological role in cold regions. The terrestrial cryosphere, which is highly sensitive to climate change, raises questions about how the evolution of snowpack characteristics will affect water resources in non-mountainous environments. The present paper presents the first results from a multimethod study on the interconnections between the snowpack structure and its internal liquid water fluxes. Fieldwork for the study was conducted at the experimental watershed of Ste-Marthe QC, Canada (BVE Ste-Marthe during winter 2020–2021. We combined the application of drone-based high-frequency ground-penetrating radar (GPR), near-infrared (NIR) and red-green-blue (RGB) photogrammetry, time-domain reflectometry (TDR moisture), stable isotopes of water, and monitoring of snowpack properties throughout the winter season. We focused on weekly drone-based GPR surveys conducted over a flat and a sloped zone of the study site. Two-way travel time (TWT) transects extracted from the radargrams are superimposed to snow depth from HD digital elevation models to compute permittivity profiles. Results show differences in hydrological response to the mild episode on March 11. The use of drone-based GPR for the study of spatiotemporal snowpack properties variability appeared extremely promising.