Snowpack - Wapusk National Park

Wapusk National Park is a sub-Arctic protected area covered with snow for over half of the year. Snowpack characteristics can provide important clues to impacts of climate change and park ecological integrity. Snow cover duration and characteristics affect soil and plant and animal components of the ecosystem. Current predictions for Wapusk are that with warming temperatures, snow in the Hudson Bay region will increase in amount but will stay for a shorter duration. This could potentially accelerate the rate of permafrost degradation. By insulating against heat loss, snow can affect the soil nutrient cycling and plant production. Snow-Water Equivalent (SWE) values are an important gauge of snow impacts on the ecosystem and on permafrost and are used to monitor park ecological integrity. SWE values for Wapusk are based on mid-winter snowpack conditions measured annually. Field measurements also include snowpack depth, density, and hardness using Adirondack snow core and RAM penetrometer equipment. Additionally, weather station sensors measure snow depth, rain, wind speed, wind direction, air temperature, air relative humidity, near surface soil and permafrost temperature. Snowpack monitoring in Wapusk is an on-going long-term partnership between Wapusk National Park, Dr. Steve Mamet at University of Saskatchewan and the Churchill Northern Studies Centre (CNSC). In phase 1, SWE values are published here. In a later phase, other snowpack and microclimate variables will also be published.

Datasets available for download

• Snowpack - Wapusk National ParkCSV
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• Snowpack - Wapusk National Park - Data DictionaryCSV
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• Adirondack snow core
• HTC
• Nature and Environment
• RAM penetrometer
• SWE
• Wapusk National Park
• air relative humidity
• air temperature
• climate change
• density
• ecological...
• hardness
• heat transfer coefficient
• long term...
• microclimate
• near surface soil...
• permafrost temperature
• rain
• snow cover
• snow depth
• snow-water equivalent
• snowpack
• snowpack depth
• weather stations
• wind direction
• wind speed
• year-round

Additional Info

• Maturity Level 1 (46%)
• Maturity Level 2 (31%)
• Maturity Level 3 (0%)
• Maturity Level 4 (0%)
• Maturity Level 5 (0%)
• Maturity Level 6 (0%)

Field	Value
Last Updated	October 20, 2025, 02:51 (UTC)
Created	October 20, 2025, 02:51 (UTC)
Domain / Topic Domain or topic of the dataset being cataloged.
Title Title for the Dataset.	Snowpack - Wapusk National Park
Description A description of the dataset.	Wapusk National Park is a sub-Arctic protected area covered with snow for over half of the year. Snowpack characteristics can provide important clues to impacts of climate change and park ecological integrity. Snow cover duration and characteristics affect soil and plant and animal components of the ecosystem. Current predictions for Wapusk are that with warming temperatures, snow in the Hudson Bay region will increase in amount but will stay for a shorter duration. This could potentially accelerate the rate of permafrost degradation. By insulating against heat loss, snow can affect the soil nutrient cycling and plant production. Snow-Water Equivalent (SWE) values are an important gauge of snow impacts on the ecosystem and on permafrost and are used to monitor park ecological integrity. SWE values for Wapusk are based on mid-winter snowpack conditions measured annually. Field measurements also include snowpack depth, density, and hardness using Adirondack snow core and RAM penetrometer equipment. Additionally, weather station sensors measure snow depth, rain, wind speed, wind direction, air temperature, air relative humidity, near surface soil and permafrost temperature. Snowpack monitoring in Wapusk is an on-going long-term partnership between Wapusk National Park, Dr. Steve Mamet at University of Saskatchewan and the Churchill Northern Studies Centre (CNSC). In phase 1, SWE values are published here. In a later phase, other snowpack and microclimate variables will also be published.
Tags / Keywords Keywords/tags categorizing the dataset.	Adirondack snow core HTC Nature and Environment RAM penetrometer SWE Wapusk National Park air relative humidity air temperature climate change density ecological... hardness heat transfer coefficient long term... microclimate near surface soil... permafrost temperature rain snow cover snow depth snow-water equivalent snowpack snowpack depth weather stations wind direction wind speed year-round
Format (CSV, XLS, TXT, PDF, etc) File format of the dataset.
Dataset Size Dataset size in megabytes.
Metadata Identifier Metadata identifier – can be used as the unique identifier for catalogue entry
Published Date Published date of the dataset.	2017-10-01
Time Period Data Span (start date) Start date of the data in the dataset.
Time Period Data Span (end date) End date of time data in the dataset.
GeoSpatial Area Data Span A spatial region or named place the dataset covers.

Field	Value
Access category Type of access granted for the dataset (open, closed, service, etc).
License License used to access the dataset.	Open Government Licence - Canada
Limits on use Limits on use of data.
Location Location of the dataset.	https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/f140e1d0-ed60-4818-85d6-f02fcb69fda1
Data Service Data service for accessing a dataset.
Owner Owner of the dataset.	Parks Canada | Parcs Canada
Contact Point Who to contact regarding access?
Contact Point Email The email to contact regarding access?
Publisher Publisher of the dataset.
Publisher Email Email of the publisher.	[email protected]
Author Author of the dataset.
Author Email Email of the author.
Accessed At Date the data and metadata was accessed.

Field	Value
Identifier Unique identifier for the dataset.
Language Language(s) of the dataset
Link to dataset description A URL to an external document describing the dataset.
Persistent Identifier Data is identified by a persistent identifier.
Globally Unique Identifier Data is identified by a persistent and globally unique identifier.
Contains data about individuals Does the data hold data about individuals?
Contains data about identifiable individuals Does the data hold identifiable data about individual?
Contains Indigenous Data Does the data hold data about Indigenous communities?
Portal Type Platform type of the source portal.

Field	Value
Version Version of the datatset	None
Source Source of the dataset.	None
Version notes Version notes about the dataset.
Is version of another dataset Link to dataset that it is a version of.
Other versions Link to datasets that are versions of it.
Provenance Text Provenance Text of the data.
Provenance URL Provenance URL of the data.
Temporal resolution Describes how granular the date/time data in the dataset is.
GeoSpatial resolution in meters Describes how granular (in meters) geospatial data is in the dataset.
GeoSpatial resolution (in regions) Describes how granular (in regions) geospatial data is in the dataset.

Field	Value
Indigenous Community Permission Who holds the Indigenous Community Permission. Who to contact regarding access to a dataset that has data about Indigenous communities.
Community Permission Community permission (who gave permission).
The Indigenous communities the dataset is about Indigenous communities from which data is derived.

Field	Value
Number of data rows If tabular dataset, total number of rows.
Number of data columns If tabular dataset, total number of unique columns.
Number of data cells If tabular dataset, total number of cells with data.
Number of data relations If RDF dataset, total number of triples.
Number of entities If RDF dataset, total number of entities.
Number of data properties If RDF dataset, total number of unique properties used by the triples.
Data quality Describes the quality of the data in the dataset.
Metric for data quality A metric used to measure the quality of the data, such as missing values or invalid formats.

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