Effect of Scale on the Complexity of Snowmelt Systems

During the melt season of 1978, the nature of snow and ice storage, the energy sources and the stream flow response were investigated at a site, a small-scale and a meso-scale watershed in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. Differences in system internal homogeneity and system response times at each of these scales indicated the usefulness of this empirical classification. It is also demonstrated that different methods of analysis of snowmelt systems are appropriate at the different scales.