IP3 Research Basins

IP3's field research was conducted in eight primary (and several subsidiary) research basins. Ranging in area from 10 to 200 km², they were chosen to be representative of the cryosphere in Western Canada, sampling a great variety of cold region topography, vegetation, climate and precipitation regimes along a NS and EW transect from high- altitude cordilleran sites in the south and west (Rocky and Coast Mountains) to high-latitude, low-elevation basins in the north and east.

These basins provided a great variety of conditions and characteristics against which to develop and test new ideas. The observations made have been used to improve cold regions process representations, to evaluate mesoscale representations in models, and to assess model performance and sensitivity in multicriteria prediction. More information is available on the data and archiving page.

Northern	Southern	Other
Wolf Creek subarctic tundra cordillera Baker Creek subarctic shield lakes Trail Valley Creek arctic tundra Scotty Creek permafrost wetlands Havikpak Creek taiga woodland Polar Bear Pass arctic wetlands	Marmot Creek subalpine forest Lake O'Hara wet alpine Peyto Glacier glaciated alpine	Reynolds Creek mountain rangeland