Relative snowpack response to elevation, temperature and precipitation in the Crown of the Continent region of North America 1980-2013.

Water availability in western Canada and the United States is dependent on the accumulation of snowpack in the montane regions and threatened by increased winter temperature and more precipitation as rain linked to climate change. In order to make reasoned decisions to adapt to climate change managers require knowledge of the role of temperature and precipitation in SWE development and data to distinguish the relative retention response of snowpack regions to expected temperature and precipitation regime shifts at the watershed scale. Using the Daymet interpolated 1 km2 dataset, effects of elevation, temperature (Tmax, Tmin and Tavg) and precipitation on April 1 SWE in the Crown of the Continent were tested by linear regression and Kendall correlation.

An evaluation of a citizen science data collection program for recording wildlife observations along a highway.

Citizen science programs that record wildlife observations on and along roads can help reduce the underreporting of wildlife-vehicle collisions and identify and prioritize road sections where mitigation measures may be required. It is important to evaluate potential biases in opportunistic citizen science data. We investigated whether the opportunistic observations of live animals by volunteers along a 46-km section of Highway 3 in the Crowsnest Pass area ("Road Watch in the Pass" data collection program) in Alberta, Canada, had a similar spatial pattern as systematically collected data by the researchers along the same road section.