Award Date

1-1-1997

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Water Resource Management

Number of Pages

87

Abstract

A study was conducted to measure sublimation rates and concurrent meteorological parameters on snow packs at Kyle Canyon, Nevada; Brian Head, Utah; and Lee Canyon, Nevada. Over 730 individual gravimetric measurements were made using snow lysimeters and over 16,500 individual meteorological measurements were taken. The measured sublimation rates averaged 0.438 mm/day, 0.757 mm/day, and 0.586 mm/day for each site respectively, with a combined average of 0.647 mm/day for all sites. There was little or no correlation between measured sublimation rates and meteorological measurements with the exception of Kyle Canyon. However, the data set from Kyle Canyon was the most limited of the sites and may have produced spurious correlations. The Thornthwaite and Holzman equation was used to calculate sublimation values for each site, predicting average sublimation rates that were less than half of the measured values. The calculated sublimation rate averaged 0.281 mm/day for all sites and, excepting Kyle Canyon data, correlated poorly with measured values. Calculated sublimation rates from an empirical equation proposed by Avery et al. (1992) were correlated with the averaged measured rates at eleven field sites including the three sites in this study, giving a correlation value of 0.775. The measured sublimation rates from this study were within the range of sublimation rates observed by other researchers. Sublimation was shown to be responsible for a significant amount of water-equivalent loss from snow packs.

Keywords

Dixie; Forest; National; Nevada; Packs; Snow; Sublimation; Toiyabe; Utah

Controlled Subject

Hydrology; Environmental sciences; Atmospheric physics

File Format

pdf

File Size

2170.88 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

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