Modeling Snowpack and Streamflow in Glacier Bay, Alaska

My name is Ryan Crumley and I’m the ESIP student fellow for Cloud Computing. My academic experience began as a geographer, and now I’m a primarily a hydrologist and modeler interested in cryospheric processes and climate change. As a part of my Ph.D. research over the past year, I’ve been using a physically-based, spatially-explicit snow evolution model in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska. This region experiences high inputs of snow and rain precipitation throughout the year and contains some of North America’s most famous glaciers, including well-documented glacier retreats over the past 200+ years. Since long-term stream gauge networks and weather stations do not exist in much of the modeled domain, my research group at Oregon State University set out to investigate and model the primary components (rain, snow melt, & glacier melt) of streamflow entering Glacier Bay. The results of my research can be found here, in the form of a StoryMap. Enjoy reading and perusing the figures and pictures, and let me know if you have any questions.