Influence of landscape aggregation in modelling snow-cover ablation and snowmelt runoff in a sub-arctic mountainous environment

Abstract

Appropriate representation of landscape heterogeneity at small to medium scales is a central issue for hydrological modelling. Two main hydrological modelling approaches, deductive and inductive, are generally applied. Here, snow-cover ablation and basin snowmelt runoff are evaluated using a combined modelling approach that includes the incorporation of detailed process understanding along with information gained from observations of basin-wide streamflow phenomena. The study site is Granger Basin, a small sub-arctic basin in the mountains of the Yukon Territory, Canada. The analysis is based on the comparison between basin-aggregated and distributed landscape representations. Results show that the distributed model based on "hydrological response" landscape units best describes the observed magnitudes of both snowcover ablation and basin runoff, whereas the aggregated approach fails to represent the differential snowmelt rates and to describe both runoff volumes and dynamics when discontinuous snowmelt events occur. Copyright © 2008 IAHS Press.