Snowpack–Vegetation–Terrain Relationships Across the Arctic Treeline, Churchill MB

• Main Author: G. Peter Kershaw
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: snowpack SWE; snowpack density; Arctic; Taiga; forest; tundra; taiga; Tundra
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.519.6804; http://www.easternsnow.org/proceedings/2003/kershaw.pdf

The arctic treeline at churchill is a 10-km-wide ecotone from open tundra to upland white spruce and lowland black spruce forest. Characteristics of the snowpack include depth, density, snow water equivalent, and heat transfer coefficient measured over two years during mid-winter. These studies reveal differences induced by vegetation variations and associated microclimates. As expected, mid-winter snowpack varies considerably between open tundra and forest sites. Despite the dramatic differences in canopy, the post-fire forest snowpack differed little from that of the unburned forests. In the peatlands, depressions associated with degrading ice wedges had snowpack characteristics more similar to forested sites than adjacent polygon centers. Interannual variations were much less than intersite variations in most snowpack characteristics. These studies are intended to be repeated annually in order to establish a longitudinal study of snowpack variation across the arctic treeline during a period of predicted dramatic change in climate.