Snow Water Equivalent Measurement and Simulation in Microbasins with Different Vegetation Cover

This paper deals with the formation of snowmelt-driven floods in two experimental microbasins located in Slovakia's highlands (300-400 m a.s.l) near the town of Považská Bystrica, Slovakia in March 2006. The first basin (Rybárik) encompasses an area of 0.119 km² and is used primarily for agriculture; while the Lesný basin with its catchment area of 0.0864 km² is characterized as a forested land. The maximal specific outflow from the Rybárik basin was observed on March 28, 2006, with 281.3 l s^-1 km^-2, peaking at 3 p.m. with 422 l s^-1 km^-2. In the Lesný basin, the maximum outflow was observed on March 29, 2006, with its peak of 523 l s^-1 km^-2 at noon. In the second part the long-term trend of snow water equivalent (SWE) modeled by the HBV-light rainfall-runoff model in the Rybárik and Lesný microbasins were evaluated. After the model verification, the daily values of SWE for the period 1965/66-2005/06 were calculated for Rybarik and Lesný microbasins. From the results it follows, that, after a temporal decline in the maxima of snow depth and of SWE in the 1990s, SWE started to increase in 2002 again. The historically highest values of SWE were simulated in both experimental microbasins in the winter season of 2005/06.