ABSTRACT
The effects of radiation scattering and sheltering on snow distributions are poorly understood in montane regions of the southwestern United States. To examine this, we develop a single layer, distributed snow model that includes canopy interception and radiation scattering and sheltering. In our simulations, we distinguish between local and remote radiation controls. This allows us to vary the representation of the effective albedo of the surrounding terrain from a vegetated to a snow-covered landscape and examine the impact this has on snow accumulation and melt. The distributed model is applied to La Jara catchment in the Valles Caldera, New Mexico, during the 2004 to 2005 winter season. Results indicate that a landscape-scale albedo controlled by vegetation has little effect on local scale-processes such as incoming shortwave radiation and maximum snow water equivalent (SWE). This implies that increases from scattered light are nearly equal to the losses of radiation from remote sheltering. In contrast, when landscape-scale albedo is controlled by snow, there are large deviations in the spatiotemporal distributions of shortwave radiation and SWE due to scattered radiation exceeding the sheltering effects of remote topography. To capture the temporal variation of the albedo of the surrounding landscape, we propose a dynamic method that accounts for snow interception in vegetation canopies. Our study results indicate that remote interactions of radiation, vegetation and topography are critical to consider in snow ecohydrological studies in regions with high solar flux and rugged topography.