This week’s edition of Canmore’s Rocky Mountain Outlook carried a detailed report on Why Cold Matters: The State and Fate of Canada’s Ice and Snow, an evening of presentations co-hosted by the Centre for Hydrology and the Interpretive Guides’ Association on Thursday, March 1.
Presenters included Prof John Pomeroy (Director of the Centre for Hydrology), Bob Sandford (CH associate and chair of the Canadian arm of the UN’s Water for Life Decade), and glaciologist Dr Shawn Marshall (University of Calgary): all three are key members of the Western Watersheds Research Collaborative.
Their talks provided illustrations of entire ecosystems which have evolved in alpine and glacial habitats, and of the immense importance of snow and ice as store-houses of water for human use. With changes to global climate likely to lead to temperature increases of as much as 4° C in the next few decades, their continued existence is looking increasingly precarious.
The article is available on the Outlook’s web-site.

CBC News has posted a report about a recent review of operations at Lake Diefenbaker preceding and during the floods of late Spring 2011, conducted by U of S hydrologists Prof John Pomeroy and Dr Kevin Shook: the article is available on the CBC Website.
The Winnipeg Free Press also published its perspective on the report.
The study, conducted on behalf of the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority, highlights the challenges of striking the right balance when trading-off the competing demands of flood protection, electricty generation and water supply. It notes that minimum water levels in the lake have been rising over the years, and that inflows from snowmelt and rainfall were – despite the best efforts of SWA staff – under-predicted, due in part to a paucity of gauges in the watersheds which drain into the lake.
The report is available as a PDF from the SWA website at the following URL.