Snowpack properties vary dramatically over a wide range of spatial scales, from crystal microstructure to regional snow climates. The driving forces of wind, energy balance, and precipitation interact with topography and vegetation to dominate snow depth variability at horizontal scales from 1 to 1000 m. This study uses land surface elevation, vegetation surface elevation, and snow depth data measured using airborne lidar at three sites in north-central Colorado. Fractal dimensions are estimated from the slope of a log-transformed variogram and demonstrate scale-invariant, fractal behavior in the elevation, vegetation, and snow depth datasets. Snow depth and vegetation topography each show two distinct fractal distributions over different scale ranges (multifractal behavior), with short-range fractal dimensions near 2.5 and long-range fractal dimensions around 2.9 at all locations. These fractal ranges are separated by a scale break at 15–40 m, depending on the site, which indicates a process change at that scale. Terrain has a fractal distribution over nearly the entire range of scales available in the data. Directional differences in the fractal dimensions for each parameter are also present at multiple scales, and are related to the wind direction frequency distributions at each site. The results indicate that different sampling resolutions may yield different results and allow rescaling in specific scale ranges. Resolutions of 10 m and finer are consistently self-similar, as are resolutions greater than 30 m, though the coarser resolutions show nearly random distributions.

The Andes span a length of 7000 km and are important for sustaining regional water supplies. Snow variability across this region has not been studied in detail due to sparse and unevenly distributed instrumental climate data. We calculated snow persistence (SP) as the fraction of time with snow cover for each year between 2000 and 2016 from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite sensors (500 m, 8-day maximum snow cover extent). This analysis is conducted between 8 and 36° S due to high frequency of cloud (> 30 % of the time) south and north of this range. We ran Mann–Kendall and Theil–Sens analyses to identify areas with significant changes in SP and snowline (the line at lower elevation where SP = 20 %). We evaluated how these trends relate to temperature and precipitation from Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications-2 (MERRA2) and University of Delaware datasets and climate indices as El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Southern Annular Mode (SAM), and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Areas north of 29° S have limited snow cover, and few trends in snow persistence were detected. A large area (34 370 km²) with persistent snow cover between 29 and 36° S experienced a significant loss of snow cover (2–5 fewer days of snow year⁻¹). Snow loss was more pronounced (62 % of the area with significant trends) on the east side of the Andes. We also found a significant increase in the elevation of the snowline at 10–30 m year⁻¹ south of 29–30° S. Decreasing SP correlates with decreasing precipitation and increasing temperature, and the magnitudes of these correlations vary with latitude and elevation. ENSO climate indices better predicted SP conditions north of 31° S, whereas the SAM better predicted SP south of 31° S.

Snow sublimation is an important component of the snow mass balance, but the spatial and temporal variability of this process is not well understood in mountain environments. This study combines a process‐based snow model (SnowModel) with eddy covariance (EC) measurements to investigate (1) the spatio‐temporal variability of simulated snow sublimation with respect to station observations, (2) the contribution of snow sublimation to the ablation of the snowpack, and (3) the sensitivity and response of snow sublimation to bark beetle‐induced forest mortality and climate warming across the north‐central Colorado Rocky Mountains. EC‐based observations of snow sublimation compared well with simulated snow sublimation at stations dominated by surface and canopy sublimation, but blowing snow sublimation in alpine areas was not well captured by the EC instrumentation. Water balance calculations provided an important validation of simulated sublimation at the watershed scale. Simulated snow sublimation across the study area was equivalent to 28% of winter precipitation on average, and the highest relative snow sublimation fluxes occurred during the lowest snow years. Snow sublimation from forested areas accounted for the majority of sublimation fluxes, highlighting the importance of canopy and sub‐canopy surface sublimation in this region. Simulations incorporating the effects of tree mortality due to bark‐beetle disturbance resulted in a 4% reduction in snow sublimation from forested areas. Snow sublimation rates corresponding to climate warming simulations remained unchanged or slightly increased, but total sublimation losses decreased by up to 6% because of a reduction in snow covered area and duration.