Shrubs are the largest plant life form in tundra ecosystems; therefore, any changes in the abundance of shrubs will feedback to influence biodiversity, ecosystem function, and climate. The snow-shrub hypothesis asserts that shrub canopies trap snow and insulate soils in winter, increasing the rates of nutrient cycling to create a positive feedback to shrub expansion. However, previous work has ...

Past studies have demonstrated a significant relationship between the phase and amplitude of the Northern Annular Mode (NAM) and both Arctic sea ice and high-latitude snow cover during boreal autumn. However, those studies have considered these forcings separately. Here we consider the collective effect of Arctic sea ice and snow cover variability for producing skillful subseasonal forecasts fo...

Seasonally snow covered areas of the mountain ranges are important components in the global hydrologic cycle. Therefore monitoring the extent of the seasonal snow cover and the accumulation and ablation zones of glaciers is essential for understanding of the global hydrologic cycle, one of the objectives in the study of the Earth sciences. Seasonal snow cover is the major source of the fresh wa...

This paper analyses an opportunity to integrate remote sensing data in a forecasting scheme of river inflow to the Krasnodar reservoir. MODIS MOD10A2 eight-day composite snow cover data was selected as the basic remote sensing information. Based on these data, a database which consists of maximal snow extent maps covering the Kuban river basin over the period from March 2000 to the present, alo...

In mountains with seasonal snow cover, the effects of climate change on snowpack will be constrained by landscape-vegetation interactions with the atmosphere. Airborne lidar surveys used to estimate snow depth, topography, and vegetation were coupled with reanalysis climate products to quantify these interactions and to highlight potential snowpack sensitivities to climate and vegetation change...

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Fractional snow covered area Snow covered extent Downscaling Topography Hillslope scale Landsat NDSI Digital elevation models Snow remote sensing Watershed hydrology Accurate characterization of snow-covered area (SCA) and snow water equivalent (SWE) in complex terrain is needed to improve estimation of streamflow timing and volume, and is important for land surf...

In the Pacific Northwest (PNW), concern about the impacts of climate and land cover change on water resources and flood-generating processes emphasizes the need for a mechanistic understanding of the interactions between forest canopies and hydrologic processes. Detailed measurements during the 1999 and 2000 hydrologic years were used to modify the Simultaneous Heat and Water (SHAW) model for a...

Recent thinning of glaciers over the Himalayas (sometimes referred to as the third polar region) have raised concern on future water supplies since these glaciers supply water to large river systems that support millions of people inhabiting the surrounding areas. Black carbon (BC) aerosols, released from incomplete combustion, have been increasingly implicated as causing large changes in the h...

For the hydro power companies it is of major importance to know the magnitude of the spring flood. Hence, the amount of snow is crucial for forecast modelling. In mountainous areas with plenty of snow, the meteorological network is often sparse, and they lack direct observations of the snow pack. Therefore, if it is possible to combine satellite snow cover area information with a hydrologic mod...