A high-resolution snow distribution on alpine catchments over Southern Columbia mountains

Snow plays an important role on the hydrological cycle of watersheds in cold regions. Predicting timing and magnitude of snow accumulation and ablation is necessary for water management in different sectors. A spatially distributed snow model (SnowModel) is chosen for our research, which is forced by meteorological data provided from automated weather stations. SnowModel is evaluated for two watersheds in southeast of BC. Two consecutive year (2006-2008) are selected for the calibration and validation processes. Simulated snow depth and snow water equivalent (SWE) are compared with observed data from snow pillows. Two error factors of Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency Index, and R-squared show 0.96, 0.98 values in accumulation period and 0.87, 0.86 for ablation period, respectively. Spatially distribution of snow depth and SWE over domains also are discussed. In general, SnowModel is able to estimate the accumulated snow depth and SWE in alpine areas in a high level of accuracy.