Snow avalanche hazard assessment and risk management in northern Quebec, eastern Canada (original) (raw)
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Recognizing the need to standardize new and innovative Canadian avalanche risk management practices and respond to increasing demand from regulatory bodies, the Canadian Avalanche Association recently embarked on a two-year project to revise and update its best practice guidelines for avalanche risk management. This paper provides highlights and practical examples from the first of two new publications, which covers the technical aspects of avalanche risk management. The centerpiece of this publication are guidelines for planning and operational risk management for common avalanche terrain land-use activities in Canada.
Avalanche Threats and Mitigation Measures in Canada
arc.lib.montana.edu
This is a summary of the Public Safety Canada commissioned report to inventory current and predict future trends in avalanche threats and mitigation programs in Canada. By the winter of 2007, avalanches were responsible for at least 702 fatalities in Canada since the earliest recorded incident in 1782. Avalanches can affect people travelling and working on transportation corridors, ski area recreationists and workers, backcountry recreationists and guides, resource industry workers, energy generation facilities and transmission lines, and people in or near public and residential buildings. In addition to hazard assessments, mitigation programs include forecasting and control programs for roads, railroads, ski areas, commercial backcountry recreation operations, resource industry worksites and roads, energy generation facilities and transmission lines, as well as public and residential land use areas. Public programs provide avalanche safety education and avalanche conditions reports, forecasts, and warnings to self-directed backcountry recreationists. However, non-mitigated avalanche threats exist to all activity types in Canada. With the exception of residential and public land use, the various types of activity in avalanche terrain are expected to either maintain current levels or increase.
2016
Not all avalanches are the same. Different combinations of snowpack structures and meteorological conditions create different types of avalanche problems with distinct risk scenarios. In North America, the Conceptual Model of Avalanche Hazard (CMAH) identifies nine distinct types of avalanche problems (also referred to as ‘avalanche characters’) Examples include ‘persistent slab avalanche problems’ or ‘wind slab avalanche problems’. Having a detailed understanding of the prevalence and character of the avalanche problem types in different regions and during different winters can provide valuable information on the nature and variability of avalanche hazard conditions in western Canada. Since the CMAH was introduced into the production of public avalanche bulletins in Canada in 2010, the public bulletin datasets from Avalanche Canada and Parks Canada from 2010-2016 offers a unique opportunity for examining the character of avalanche hazard in western Canada more comprehensively. In t...
A manual for assessing, mapping and mitigating snow avalanche risk
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In summer 2018, the Canadian Avalanche Association will publish a book entitled Planning Methods for Assessing and Mitigating Snow Avalanche Risk. This book describes the methods used to assess, map and mitigate snow avalanche hazard and risk. The book is intended for the consultants, engineers, geoscientists, and their teams who prepare the reports and maps. However, to encourage readers interested in, or starting land-use planning for snow avalanche risk, the book includes hypothetical examples and illustrations in which qualitative, semi-quantitative and quantitative assessment and mapping methods are applied to diverse situations where elements at risk are exposed to snow avalanches. The book does not prescribe which methods are to be used in specific situations or jurisdictions; rather it provides a toolbox of methods for practitioners to select from, adapt and apply. The assessment and mapping chapters may be most relevant to North America and other regions where there are few written records of avalanche runouts, dynamic models are poorly calibrated, yet vegetation damage from extreme runouts are often available. The book does not cover the operational (day-today) management of snow avalanche risk by avalanche forecasters, ski guides, etc. There are 14 chapters: an introduction that frames the methods in the ISO 31000 context, six chapters about characterizing the terrain and avalanches for the situation of interest, four chapters about assessment and mapping methods, and three chapters that overview mitigation methods. The 280-page book has 16 authors with diverse experience in assessing, mapping and mitigating snow avalanche hazard and risk.
Centre D'avalanche De La Haute GaspÉsie: 15 Years of Avalanche Safety in Quebec
International Snow Science Workshop 2014 Proceedings, Banff, Canada, 2014
Historically overlooked in Quebec, snow avalanches nonetheless resulted in 73 fatalities across the province between 1825 and the present day. Beginning 15 years ago, the development of winter tourism in the Chic-Chocs Mountains revealed the need for avalanche safety programs. Therefore, the Centre d'avalanche de la Haute-Gaspésie was created in 1999 to promote backcountry safety among Quebec's skiers, who are known to travel far and wide in pursuit of their sport. The first service to emerge was a forecasting program that issued a snow bulletin once a week to inform backcountry users of conditions in the mountains. Today, a bilingual avalanche bulletin, issued every two days from December 1st to April 30 th , highlights the danger rating and avalanche problems. In the early 2000s, the Canadian Avalanche Association (CAA) came to Quebec to help develop expertise by offering avalanche, weather and search and rescue professional training. To date, more than 150 students have taken CAA courses in the province. Public awareness activities have also successfully informed and educated youth and winter enthusiasts through public conferences, Avalanche Skills Training courses, workshops and Avalanche Awareness Days held for the last 10 years in the Chic-Chocs. All these programs have the common goal to improve avalanche safety, reduce risk of accidents and thus save lives. Unique in Eastern Canada, this not-for-profit organization is now working toward a provincial recognition and is in the process of changing its name to Quebec Avalanche Centre or Avalanche Quebec.
Proceedings of the 2006 International Snow Science Workshop Telluride Colorado, 2006
Avalanche sites mapping and classification are tools that have been frequently used for managing avalanche risks. The use of geographic information systems (GIS) for such applications has great potential although it is still in development. The potential avalanche sites of the Chic-Chocs Mountains, Québec, Canada, was mapped with GIS technology, satellite images, aerial photos and 1:20 000 topographic maps. A forest map, including three different levels of forest density, was generated from the satellite image. A total of 59 potential avalanche zones were characterized in this area, including 249 avalanches paths, Moreover, in order to build an institutional memory bank of one of the most frequented area by winter sports adepts in Québec, a system was created to allow future cataloguing of avalanche occurrences inside the potential avalanche location map. Another terrain analysis was also performed to address the challenge of the access restrictions of Mount-Albert in Gaspésie National Park. A terrain classification by exposure to avalanches based on Parks Canada's technical model was performed in order to help safer management of the park's winter activities. The database linked to a GIS is the basis for the study of potential correlation between topographic parameters and weather patterns.
Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 2005
In mountainous areas, ecological disturbances causing forest fragmentation may influence the pattern and regime of snow avalanches. In the northern Gaspé Peninsula (Quebec), at two sites located on treed slopes of a southnorth oriented valley, tree removal by fire and logging operations was the precursor factor for avalanche activity. Years of high-magnitude snow avalanches were identified based on tree-ring techniques; these avalanches were different from those identified by Dubé et al. (2004) for three undisturbed scree-slope sites in the same area. The lack of synchronicity in avalanche occurrences between disturbed and undisturbed sites suggests a strong influence of local factors (e.g., disturbance, local topography, slope aspect, vegetation). The first avalanche years were recorded in 1941 and 1988, after a fire in 1938 and logging operations in 19861987, respectively. Both of these years had above average snowfalls; this indicates that climate (total annual snowfall) was al...
Linking avalanche hazard in Western Canada to climate oscillations
2017
While the effect of large-scale climate patterns (e.g., El Niño-Southern Oscillation) on winter temperature and precipitation in Western Canada is relatively well understood, little is known regarding the link between climate and avalanche hazard. Previous studies have been hindered by the inconsistent or incomplete avalanche, weather, and snowfall observations. Using avalanche hazard assessments from Avalanche Canada and Parks Canada from the 2009/10 to 2016/17 winter seasons I examined the nature and variability of avalanche hazard and the relationship to large-scale climate patterns. I identify typical avalanche hazard situations and calculate their seasonal prevalence to develop a quantitative measure of the nature of local avalanche hazard conditions. I then use the prevalence values of typical hazard conditions to examine the relationship between climate oscillations and avalanche hazard. This study suggests a relationship between the climate patterns and avalanche hazard situations with a method that is more informative for avalanche risk management.
Snow avalanche regime and climatic conditions in the Chic-Choc Range, eastern Canada
Climatic Change, 2009
Because snow avalanches occur at altitudes close to the 0 • C isotherm in mountain environments, they should respond quickly to climatic variations. This study provides tree-ring-based high-magnitude avalanche chronologies for 12 subalpine avalanche paths in the Chic-Choc Range of Québec (eastern Canada). For the period covered by the chronologies, i.e., between 1895 and 1999, high-magnitude avalanches occurred with an average return interval of 5.3 years, which represents an average annual probability of 21% for all paths. A regional avalanche activity index (RAAI) was developed to help differentiating widespread regional avalanche activity from avalanche events resulting from local factors. Nineteen years of highmagnitude avalanche occurrence were identified