Understanding Temporal Changes in Snow Water Equivalency
in the Kootenay Boundary Region
Introduction

Methodology

• Collect data from BC River Forecast Centre website
• Sort over 50,000 points of data in Excel
• Condense and manipulate data (averaging monthly figures for every 3rd winter
between 2005/2006-2017/2018 season) in Excel
• ArcGIS Pro Space Time Cube Training with Esri
• Create shapefiles from CSV files in ArcCatalog
• Create local scenes and layouts to display data using graduated symbols in ArcGIS Pro
• Create Time Slider in ArcGIS Pro

Results

Limitations & Constraints

• Consistency in data per station, per variable
• Lack of complete data sets for all themes
• Data manipulation, understanding data
layout for Space Time Cube
• Having to revisit data and continuously
manipulate data multiple times
• Space Time Cube visualization

Snow and ice are highly important elements in the cryosphere (Earth’s frozen water component) as they are a vital source of stored
freshwater (Langlois et al. 2009). It stores freshwater through the winter months and release water into our ecosystems in the spring
as spring freshet, and in the warmer and drier months of summer (Pyne K, Callegari G 2019). The water that is stored as snow and ice
is what hydrologists call Snow Water Equivalency (SWE). It is this SWE that is of primary importance for climatological and hydrological
processes (Langlois et al. 2009).
Water is important for all life; it’s the release of cold water from snow and ice that recharges groundwater, helps our waterways stay
cool, and supplies aquatic organisms with oxygen to breathe (Pyne K, Callegari G 2019). This water also supplies essential nutrients for
plants and animals, including humans. Simply put, all ecosystems and life-forms are at the mercy of clean, available freshwater.
It is the significant role that freshwater plays and for all the sectors SWE impacts (power generation, irrigation, industry, fisheries, and
wildlife) that makes it crucial to monitor and analyze any variations and trends (Mudryk et al. 2018).

• No obvious relationship between SWE with
temperature and precipitation
• SWE is consistently lower in the East Kootenays than of
the West Kootenays
• Only Floe Creek, East Creek and Redfish Creek Stations
recorded temperatures below -12.0oC
• Fluctuation in precipitation varies between all years
examined makes it difficult to recognize any trends
• 2008/2009 and 2014/2015 winter seasons have lowest
amount of recorded precipitation

*each winter season contains data for each month within that season (December, January, February and March) – each line represents a monthly average

Sources:
BC Rivers Forecast Centre website

By Angela Beaton
IEP 271 GIS Applications II
Coordinate System: NAD
1983_UTM Zone 11N
Date: April 9th, 2019