Effect of vegetation and characteristics of relief on the snow accumulation and snow melt in mountain catchments in Ore Mountains
Abstract
This article describe: 1) the influence of vegetation and characteristics of relief on spatial distribution of snow water equivalent and development of snow water equivalent, 2) using of cluster analysis as method for evaluating measured data. In this work, emphasis is placed on describing the influence of vegetation, aspect and elevation.
To evaluate the influence of these factors on value of snow water equivalent there was used linear regression and one of the methods of multivariate statistical analysis – cluster analysis. These methods were applied to measured data from experimental catchments of river Bystřice and Zlatý potok in western part of the Ore Mountains.
Snow water equivalent is measured on 19 places in these catchments from 2008. The research shows that the greatest influence on the distribution and evolution of snow water equivalent in the experimental basins has vegetation and some dependency was proved also between the points of southern exposure.
The results of measurements and statistical analysis are compared with results published in technical literature. The measurement results demonstrate the suitability of cluster analysis for analyzing the data of point values of snow water equivalent.