Once considered the largest wetland in Central Asia, the Mesopotamian Marshlands of Southeastern Iraq have nearly disappeared. Various hydrological projects by the Iraqi government and dam construction in the region have nearly destroyed these once rich freshwater wetlands by over 90%. With the launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom recent attempts...
Forested, mountain landscapes in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) are changing at an unprecedented rate, largely due to shifts in the regional climate regime. Documented climatic trends across the PNW include increasing wildfire frequency and intensity and an increasingly ephemeral snowpack, especially at moderate elevations. One relationship that has yet to...
California's water resources vary throughout the state owing to the regions varying topography, diverse climate, and the distribution of precipitation. Most of the state's precipitation falls over the northern coastal range and the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Winter snowpack that accumulates within these mountain basins serves as...
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Anne W. Nolin
California’s water resources vary throughout the state owing to the regions
The western United States is experiencing significant changes in wildfire and snow regimes as a result of warming temperatures. An amplification of wildfire activity and reduction in snow water equivalent, snow covered area, and earlier spring snowmelt are documented trends that are projected to continue into the future. With an...
Glaciers are effective reservoirs because they moderate variations in runoff and
supply reliable flow during drought periods. Thus, there needs to be a clear
understanding of the influence of glacier runoff at both the basin and catchment scale.
The objectives of this study were to quantify the late summer contributions...
Declines in glacier area and volume are widespread. These changes will have important hydrologic consequences since glaciers store tremendous amounts of fresh water and buffer seasonally low flows in many densely populated regions. In this thesis I focus on a region that is hydrologically vulnerable to glacier change, namely the...
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Anne W. Nolin
Declines in glacier area and volume are widespread. These changes will have
Shifting climate patterns in the Columbia River basin are affecting snow pack, and, as a result, stream flow throughout the region. In the Oregon Cascades, ever growing populations, and their associated activities, place increasing stress on an already over allocated hydrologic system. Political pressures, including the possibility of renegotiation or...
Forest canopy cover presents a major challenge for remote sensing of fractional snow-covered area (ƒSCA). Snow cover is systematically underestimated where satellites sensors cannot penetrate the forest canopy. Current canopy adjustments scale observable ƒSCA with the vegetation fraction, assuming that snow cover distributions are similar between sub-canopy and open locations....
Snow water equivalent (SWE) is a critical measurement in hydrology and water resources management. Microwave remote sensing can estimate snow water equivalent (SWE). However, the algorithms used to estimate SWE require snow grain size information. Thus, determining snow grain size is pertinent to estimate SWE. Currently, there are several models...
In the mountains of the Western US, shifts in the timing and magnitude of snow water equivalent (SWE) over the past century are well documented and attributed to climate warming, but the magnitude of sensitivity depends on elevation. We modeled the spatial distribution of SWE and its sensitivity to climate...