#snowhydrology

Hello again! To the few friends and family that followed our blog last year we have some good news! We are starting it up again for our 2017 field season. Evan and myself are back in Inuvik, along with Aaron Thompson and Vicky Vanthof from the University of Waterloo getting ready to start our 2017 spring field campaign out at Trail Valley Creek research camp. As we wrap up a busy week in Inuvik preparing our gear for transport to camp here is a quick summary of our past few days. The first day was spent getting settled in the Aurora College Rowhouses in Inuvik and checking in on our freight shipments from Waterloo. Confirming all of our research equipment and camp gear had arrived in town was a huge relief! Days 2 and 3 were spend gathering the rest of the camp supplies including fuel drums, lumber and hardware, and delivering it to Gwhich’n helicopters for slinging to camp on Monday. As you can see from some of the pictures we have a lot of gear! Luckily to this point we have been graced with amazing weather and no large hiccups.

On Day 4 we were able to take some time off from prepping and decided to head north along the Ice road to visit Tuktoyaktuk along the Arctic Ocean. It was the first time in Tuk for all four of us, and also the first time spotting pingos- small rolling hills formed in drained lake basins where an expanding ice core forces the above soil up. The 2.5 hour drive along the plowed east channel of the Mackenzie Delta filled with spectacular sites of the delta, some wildlife spotting, and many slippery corners. Driving the ice road highway was an amazing experience and should be on everyone’s northern bucket list. Unfortunately this is the last year the ice road between Inuvik and Tuk because of the new all season Inuvik-Tuk highway (ITH) that will be opening this fall. Travelling the old road one last time before the spring breakup washes it away was the primary motivation for our little adventure.

Today (day 5) was spent travelling between the loading bay at ARI and the helicopter pad transferring the remainder of our equipment. I think we counted 7 or 8 trips back and forth along the final bumpy section of the dempster highway, it was hard to keep count as the trips began to blend together. The whole crew was working hard and we ended up stopping for some much needed lunch at the Cloud 9 airport restaurant.

Tomorrow we will be skidoiing out to our research camp- a 3 hour skidoo trip across the shrub dominated tundra. Looks like its going to be great weather all week. 

Till next time

Researcher Profile: Phil Mann, 2nd year MSc Candidate

Focus: Physical properties of Snow Hydrology

Hi everyone!

 I guess I have finally been forced to write something for this TVC blog. My name is Phil Mann (the tall Phil), I am also marooned at Trail Valley Creek this spring with 5 others (Branden, Tyler, Evan, Matt and Gabriel). Slowly but surely the snow is melting and restricting our transportation via skidoo, soon enough we will have to do like the summer crew and start walking to our specific sites.  I am a second year MSC student at Wilfrid Laurier University studying snow hydrology in Western Arctic environments under Philip Marsh. My research looks at quantifying spatial variations in end of winter snowcover by using a variety of new techniques in tundra environments. However, I am focusing on the spatial variability of snow in a small 1 km2 catchment area. This trip brings me up to my third field season in the arctic, with being excluded from the 2015 fall trip (only Branden and Tyler went on), however, to my luck, it was a very wet and miserable time for them. With Tyler de Jong leaving us and heading to look for gold in Whitehorse I will finally be in charge of the jokes (it’s about time!).

Specifically I study the end of winter snow accumulation maximum, which is the few days right before the onset of melt. I spend all my time doing snow surveys across this landscape, this includes measuring snow depths (using a snow probe or the fancy new Magnaprobe) and snow densities (using a snow coring tube, the fancy new ESC-30). With these two we can obtain snow water equivalent (SWE), which is just a measure of how much water is contained in a snowpack if you were to melt the snow. I am more interested in the drift features that form on this tundra landscape, and how much snow and even better yet SWE is being stored in these big features. These drifts only occupy 5 to 10% of the area however can hold up to 40% of total basin SWE. I am also using a new remote sensing technique to map SWE, using a