Snowpacks play an important role in the drought and water levels in B.C., and a team of researchers is using LiDAR technology to be able to more accurately measure snowpack levels.
Researchers at the Hakai Cryosphere Node — which is a collaboration between the University of Northern British Columbia, Vancouver Island University and the Hakai Institute — have been researching snowpack levels and how glaciers are affected by wildfires for five years. The team has now received funding to continue its research for another five years.
Previously, snowpack levels have been measured by people going out and using a snow tube to measure snow depth and density, however, this poses issues because it only measures a small area and it can be difficult to scale up the information.
The Hakai Cryosphere Node team is now using a plane equipped with LiDAR to measure snowpack in B.C. in combination with the traditional methods.
The plane takes measurements of an area when there is no snow, then another set of measurements when there is snow, then the two numbers can be subtracted to get an estimate of snow depth.
“You can create very detailed 3D models of the Earth’s surface. It’s a massive advancement in our ability to measure snow,” said Bill Floyd, co-lead of the project and a research hydrologist with the B.C. Ministry of Forests and a VIU geography adjunct professor.
“We can get a number now for how many million cubic meters of water is stored in the snowpack. That’s something we’ve never really been able to say before.”
The team is also looking into the question of how much of a role snowpack plays in the province’s annual water levels or drought.
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“We had some fundamental questions about how important seasonal snow is in the total water budget. How important are glaciers in terms of runoff or headwater streams? And how these natural resources, these frozen reservoirs, are changing through time and can we come up with better ways to estimate the total volume or what is often referred to as the total mass of water contained within the seasonal snow and glaciers themselves,” said Brian Menounos, co-lead on the project and geography professor at UNBC.
Floyd says the snowpack numbers are being used in all the watershed sites the team has studied, and the data informs decisions on people who manage water supply on things like imposing water restrictions.
“We’ve been able to show in these watersheds that snow makes up a significant component for the five years we’ve measured,” said Floyd.
In addition to snowpack data, Menounos is focusing on how glaciers are responding to climate change and how wildfires influence glaciers.
Since wildfires create hazy skies that block out the sunlight, it temporarily blocks out the main control on melting snow and ice. However, it also creates particulate matter that falls on the snow or ice which tends to absorb energy and accelerates the melting of the snow and ice around it, VIU said in a release.
“Glaciers are mother nature’s reservoirs. They release water exactly when these headway streams and aquatic ecosystems need that cool, plentiful water. So right now, we have drought conditions. It wasn’t as apparent last autumn but in autumn 2022 if you were to look at streams that were fed by glaciers versus those that weren’t you’ll find that there were waters in those creeks fed by glaciers,” said Menounos, adding glaciers add a buffering capacity against drought.
“If you take those glaciers away and you’ve lost that capacity to buffer, you elevate the vulnerability of aquatic ecosystems like fish.”
Laura Brougham
