MountSnow – Mountain snowmelt and its importance for catchment storage and runoff

Mountain catchments are often influenced by snow, which affects runoff seasonality. Over the last decades, snow amounts have decreased in many mountain regions and the spring melt has shifted to earlier in the year. Studies indicate that warmer temperatures lead to reduced snow accumulation, and earlier and slower snowmelt has a large effect on surface runoff and groundwater recharge. 

The MountSnow project is a collaboration with Charles University (CU) in Prague, Czechia. In the project, different aspects of the effects of changes in snowmelt on catchment storage and surface runoff are studied. This PhD project will investigate how shifts in snow accumulation and melt timing influence catchment storage and its relationship with climate variability and catchment characteristics. The research explores these effects across different spatial and temporal scales. The first part will focus on the variation in groundwater level response to snowmelt events across a hillslope. For this, detailed field measurements of groundwater levels obtained in experimental catchments will be used. The second part will focus on a large set of catchments within Switzerland and Czechia. By combining the results of a hydrological model and groundwater level measurements, we hope to gain more insight into how groundwater storage responds to changes in snowmelt, (inter-) annual variations, and the influence of different catchment characteristics.
 

Contact: Karin Bremer

Supervisors: Jan Seibert und Maria Staudinger