2007 Volume 59 Issue 6 Pages 47-54
The large earthquake on October 23, 2004 named Chu-etsu earthquake caused a number of landslides in the Imokawa basin, Niigata Prefecture. The landslides resulted in a large amount of unstable debris in the Imokawa River. Because the Imokawa basin is well-known as a heavy snowfall area, we should study the method of prediction of snowmelt to prevent the secondary damage by the snowmelt flood. In this study, the simplified and practical heat balance method was applied to predict the amount of snowmelt in the Imokawa basin. This method requires only the simple meteorological forecasting data of weather, temperature and precipitation and the topographic data of the basin. To test its applicability for the short-term prediction, daily snowmelt was predicted and compared with the actual data obtained by the on-site measurement in the Imokawa basin during the winter in 2004105. The results show that the proposed method can provide the short-term forecasting of snowmelt which is precise enough to prevent the disasters induced by snowmelt.
