On catchment scale the seasonality of a streamflow regime is controlled by and composed of different water contributions to the stream (such as glacier melt, snow melt, rainfall / event water, groundwater etc). The streamflow regime is also influenced by evapotranspiration etc. What would be your first idea if you only have streamflow data/signal available to identify the snowmelt period (during the year) and/or to estimate the snowmelt contribution according to yearly discharge sums? My focus is on humid catchments on a meso- or regional-scale (lets say 10 to 1000 km^2 with 50yr streamflow data). All suggestions/ideas/methods are welcome (perhaps also what kind of additional data would be helpful to justify your approach, e.g. stream temperature, groundwater level, isotope data....)!
I think that Mike Dettinger (USGS, [email protected]) has done this type of an analysis. He is who you should contact.
Below is an idea, but I've never encountered this problem so I haven't thought too deeply about this.
If the streamflow data is at sub-daily time resolution (such as hourly), then you might look to see a difference between night-time and day-time streamflow. If day-time is visibly higher than night-time, then likely it is caused by melt (snow and/or glacier).
The occurrence of rainstorms will mask this signal. But on days without rain, if it is the melt season then you should see a difference between daytime and nighttime runoff.
This difference, plus some calculations of energy balance based on solar radiation intensity might even provide a rough estimate of what fraction of the streamflow came from melt (as opposed to outflow of groundwater).
At least it sill be interesting/fun to look for the day vs night difference :-)
Other idea is to look for satellite data of snow-covered area over your region of interest. On how to estimate snowmelt from declines in snow-covered area, look at the publications of Roger Bales (Sierra Nevada Research Institute).
Viel Spass!
Mariza
You can opt conventional technique to estimate the snow melt contribution in river flow if you have only stream flow data. By this technique u can estimate for most of the month in a year. If have any pblm kindly contact me [email protected]
Hi Michael! I'm analyzing the changes in the onset of the spring snowmelt pulse over the Andes, based on daily streamflow. You can calculate the cumulative anomalies with respect to the mean streamflow and find the minimum in the curve, which usually indicates the onset of the spring pulse. For example, you can identify a variety of indices that can tell you how fast is the snowmelt contributing to the streamflow changes.
You might be interested in some of these papers
All the best!
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169414005137
Article Changes Toward Earlier Streamflow Timing Across Western North America
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