Snow Water Equivalent Measurement and Simulation in Microbasins with Different Vegetation Cover

Abstract

This paper deals with the formation of snowmelt-driven floods in two experimental microbasins located in Slovakia’s highlands (300–400 m a.s.l) near the town of Považská Bystrica, Slovakia in March 2006. The first basin (Rybárik) encompasses an area of 0.119 km2 and is used primarily for agriculture; while the Lesný basin with its catchment area of 0.0864 km2 is characterized as a forested land. The maximal specific outflow from the Rybárik basin was observed on March 28, 2006, with 281.3 l s-1 km-2, peaking at 3 p.m. with 422 l s-1 km-2. In the Lesný basin, the maximum outflow was observed on March 29, 2006, with its peak of 523 l s-1 km-2 at noon. In the second part the long-term trend of snow water equivalent (SWE) mod- eled by the HBV-light rainfall-runoff model in the Rybárik and Lesný microbasins were evaluated. After the model verification, the daily values of SWE for the period 1965/66–2005/06 were calculated for Ry- barik and Lesný microbasins. From the results it follows, that, after a temporal decline in the maxima of snow depth and of SWE in the 1990s, SWE started to increase in 2002 again. The historically highest val- ues of SWE were simulated in both experimental microbasins in the winter season of 2005/06.