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Snow Cover

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Water Resources of Lebanon

Part of the book series: World Water Resources ((WWR,volume 7))

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Abstract

Among many features of water resources in Lebanon, snow is still the principal resource which has a significant role in the replenishment of rivers, springs and groundwater reservoirs. Therefore, without snow, Lebanon will lose the largest part of its water, which can be estimated to more than 60%. Recently, the exacerbated challenges on water supply makes it necessary to give concerns to snow cover and its accumulation/melting regime . This must be normal since several studies in Lebanon pointed out that snow shares to 50–60% of the water volume in rivers and springs, and then in feeding groundwater aquifers. For this reason, recent researches and studies have been applied; in particular for monitoring snow cover, field investigations, modeling and the interact with climate change. However, data analysis is still a crucial matter for research. Therefore, remote sensing techniques in combination with the advanced ground measuring stations have been utilized. This chapter will present a detailed discussion on snow cover in Lebanon depending on several research studies obtained by the author. Most of these studies utilized many types of satellite images with diverse spatial and temporal resolution. In addition, field investigations to determine snow density, depth and its relationship to different topographic and geologic features were studied. These are mostly the first of their type applied in Lebanon.

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Shaban, A. (2020). Snow Cover. In: Water Resources of Lebanon. World Water Resources, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48717-1_5

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