MOUNTAIN ICE & WATER LAB

For the first part of the summer, much of our fieldwork has been taking place at Castle Mountain Resort and at the University of Lethbridge’s West Castle Field Station in the valley below. The drive takes about an hour and a half from Lethbridge, and each trip usually involves a full day of carrying equipment, installing sensors, collecting measurements, and troubleshooting whatever the mountain decides to throw at us.

Our goal is to understand how water moves through this mountain landscape, from snow accumulation and melt, into the soil and shallow groundwater, and eventually downstream into the river. To do this, we are installing a network of soil-moisture sensors, shallow groundwater wells, infiltration measurements, and air-temperature sensors across an elevation gradient stretching from the valley bottom to near the mountain ridge.

By comparing conditions at different elevations, we hope to better understand where water is stored, how quickly it moves, and how those patterns change throughout the season. We are also measuring streamflow and monitoring stream temperature at several locations.

In partnership with the Bogard Aquatic Biochemistry Lab, we are expanding this work to include water-quality indicators, allowing us to examine not only how much water is moving through the system, but also how its characteristics change along the way.

This is a new research site for our group, and I am excited to see the monitoring network beginning to take shape. I am especially grateful to the Castle Mountain Resort team, who have facilitated our access, helped us navigate the site, and been incredibly supportive of our research.

Meet Our Summer Field Team!

Summer fieldwork is well underway, and I’m very glad to have Amanda, Bridget, and Dominique as part of the Mountain Ice and Water group this season. All three are Geography students at the University of Lethbridge, and they have already contributed to a busy mix of lab preparation, sensor testing, field installations, and data collection.

Amanda has focused much of her summer on preparing and installing a new weather station at Haig Lake. This has involved testing sensors in the lab, planning the deployment, and helping complete the installation in the field. She is also working with climatological data from the Castle basin to help us better understand its hydrology.

Bridget will be working on glacier albedo measurements at Peyto Glacier later this summer. She has also taken the lead on salt-dilution streamflow measurements at Castle Mountain and has been ready to jump into other field tasks whenever we need all hands on deck.

Dominique is our resident sensor wizard. He has been calibrating and testing instruments from across the lab, programming dataloggers, organizing metadata, and keeping track of incoming data to make sure our equipment is working as expected.

I’m very happy to have such a capable and enthusiastic team helping move our research forward this summer.

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Glaciers, Water, and a Decade of Action

3/22/2026

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This weekend brings together three closely connected moments: International Glacier Day, World Water Day, and the start of the UN Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences. Together, they highlight a simple reality in mountain regions: ice, water, and climate are tightly linked and changing quickly.

Glaciers support water resources, shape access in mountain terrain, and are part of the culture and identity of many regions. They are also rapidly retreating in ways that are easy to grasp. We can look at photographs from 20, 10, or even just a few years ago and see how much alpine landscapes have changed as glaciers recede to higher elevations. Recent global studies show that nearly all glaciers on Earth have changed over the past decades (Dussaillant et al., 2024), with accelerating losses in recent years (Menounos et al., 2025, Hugonnet et al., 2021). This change can be measured and tracked, showing how quickly conditions are shifting as temperatures rise.

One of the key consequences of this change is how it affects water downstream, in ways that are far less visible than glacier retreat itself. As glaciers shrink, the storage, timing, and pathways of water through mountain systems are shifting. This is changing when water is available, how much is available, and increasing pressure during low-flow periods. The close succession of Glacier Day and World Water Day reflects this fundamental connection.

In response to these changes, the UN Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences (2025–2034) has been launched as a global initiative to advance research and support informed action. It calls on scientists, governments, and communities to work together to better understand the cryosphere and to safeguard the billions of people who depend on it.

At the Mountain Ice and Water Lab, we work to better understand how these changes are reshaping mountain water systems. Over the coming years, we’ll continue building the knowledge needed to make sense of a rapidly changing water cycle. This includes starting new projects in the Canadian Rockies to investigate these linkages, continuing and building new collaborations, training and recruiting students, expanding fieldwork, and using hydrological modelling to better understand ongoing changes, while ensuring our work helps address some of the most pressing water challenges facing society. We’re looking forward to the work ahead and to sharing what we learn along the way.

More information:

The UN Decade of Cryospheric Action: https://www.un-cryosphere.org/en

Hugonnet, R., McNabb, R., Berthier, E., Menounos, B., Nuth, C., Girod, L., Farinotti, D., Huss, M., Dussaillant, I., Brun, F., & Kääb, A. (2021). Accelerated global glacier mass loss in the early twenty-first century. Nature, 592(7856), 726–731.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03436-z

Dussaillant, I., Hugonnet, R., Huss, M., Berthier, E., Bannwart, J., Paul, F., & Zemp, M. (2025). Annual mass change of the world's glaciers from 1976 to 2024 by temporal downscaling of satellite data with in situ observations. Earth System Science Data, 17, 1977–2006.
DOI: 10.5194/essd-17-1977-2025

Menounos, B., Huss, M., Marshall, S., Ednie, M., Florentine, C., & Hartl, L. (2025). Glaciers in Western Canada–conterminous US and Switzerland experience unprecedented mass loss over the last four years (2021–2024). Geophysical Research Letters, 52, e2025GL115235.
DOI: 10.1029/2025GL115235

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MSc In Snow-Groundwater Interactions

11/22/2025

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We’re excited to share that we are recruiting an MSc student to work on snowmelt–groundwater dynamics in mountain headwaters, starting May or September 2026.
The project will combine field instrumentation in the Castle region (Southern Alberta) with hydrological modelling to understand how snowmelt contributes to groundwater recharge and seasonal water availability under a changing climate. This is a great opportunity for a student interested in mountain hydrology, cryosphere processes, and climate impacts, with opportunities for both fieldwork and modelling development.

Key details

Start date: May 2026 (preferred) or September 2026
Duration: 2 years (MSc)
Funding: $16,000 per year, plus potential scholarship and TA support
Ideal applicant: background in hydrology, geoscience, environmental science, physical geography, or similar; enthusiasm for field and modelling work

See poster below and here for more details.

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PhD Opportunity in Proglacial Hydrology & Groundwater

11/22/2025

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We are pleased to announce a fully funded PhD position starting September 2026 at the Mountain Ice & Water Lab (University of Lethbridge), focusing on groundwater dynamics in the proglacial zone of Peyto Glacier.

This project investigates how meltwater from snow and glacial ice infiltrates evolving proglacial landscapes and contributes to groundwater storage and streamflow. The work combines field monitoring in glacier forefields with process-based hydrological and 3D groundwater modelling, offering a unique opportunity to study emerging hydrological systems in newly deglaciated terrain.

Position Highlights

Start date: September 2026
Duration: 4 years (PhD)
Funding: $18,000 per year (+ potential scholarships and teaching assistantships)
Research focus: Meltwater–groundwater interactions, proglacial hydrology, climate-driven water storage
Methods: Field instrumentation (piezometers, pressure sensors), data analysis, energy-balance modelling, groundwater simulation

Full project description and application instructions are available in the poster below and here

Informal enquiries and early expressions of interest are encouraged by mid-January 2026.

If you're interested in mountain hydrology, subsurface processes, or cryosphere–climate interactions and excited to join a collaborative research team, we’d love to hear from you.