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Physical and Economic Design Criteria for Induced Snow Accumulation Projects
Author(s) -
Tabler Ronald D.
Publication year - 1968
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/wr004i003p00513
Subject(s) - snow , fencing , fence (mathematics) , precipitation , environmental science , groundwater recharge , yield (engineering) , scale (ratio) , hydrology (agriculture) , mathematics , meteorology , geography , engineering , groundwater , geotechnical engineering , computer science , materials science , cartography , combinatorics , parallel computing , aquifer , metallurgy
Snow fencing promises to be an important means of increasing surface water yield or ground water recharge on windswept watersheds where snow is an important form of precipitation. Assuming an equally spaced series of snow fences, a physical production function can be developed that relates fence spacing to the ‘most probable’ annual snow catch, based on a probability analysis of winter precipitation. The optimum scale of development in terms of fence spacing, determined by standard marginal analysis, indicates that the smaller the marginal value of output with respect to inputs, the greater the probability must be of the fences filling annually if net benefits are to be maximized.