Water balance studies in two catchments on Spitsbergen, Svalbard

摘要

Hydrological studies at Svalbard have been concentrated in two catchments in particular, the Bayelva catchment near Ny Alesund and I)e Geerdalen near Longyearbyen. Hydrological processes and water balance in these and some other catchments were monitored and studied in several projects during the 1990s and a summary of the main results were presented in a series of papers in the journal Polar Research in 2003. This paper contains a summary of some of these results, supplemented with a description of the catchments. The runoff in Svalbard is dominated by snowmelt and glacial melt. The runoff is usually much higher than observed precipitation, since the precipitation gauges only can catch around 50% of the precipitation due to strong winds, low temperatures, and snow precipitation. Hvaporation is low, less than 100 mm year"1 from glacier-free areas, and probably close to zero from glaciers.