The Canadian tuckahoe is the perennial sclerotium of Polyporus tuberaster jacq. ex Fries. It is commonly found in the parkland belt of the Canadian prairies where land supporting, virgin poplar groves, mainly Populus tremuloides Michx., is being brought under cultivation. Sporophore as many as three to a single sclerotium, appear in late June and July. Interfertility studies with single spore cultures isolated from sporophores derived from four sources in Western Canada and from one source in Italy have shown that both the Canadian fungus and the European P. tuberaster are heterothallic, have the tetrapolar type of interfertility, and are interfertile.
Abstract. Snowpack accumulation and depletion are important elements of the
hydrological cycle in the Canadian prairies. The surface runoff generated
during snowmelt is transformed into streamflow or fills numerous depressions
driving the focussed recharge of groundwater in this dry setting. The
snowpack in the prairies can undergo several cycles of accumulation and
depletion in a winter. The timing of the melt affects the mechanisms of
snowpack depletion and their hydrological implications. The effects of
midwinter melts were investigated at four instrumented sites in the Canadian
prairies. Unlike net radiation-driven snowmelt during spring melt, turbulent
sensible heat fluxes were the dominant source of energy inputs for midwinter
melt occurring in the period with low solar radiation inputs. Midwinter melt
events affect several aspects of hydrological cycle with lower runoff ratios
than subsequent spring melt events, due to
their role in the timing of
the focussed recharge. Remote sensing data have shown that midwinter melt
events regularly occur under the present climate throughout the Canadian
prairies, indicating applicability of the study findings throughout the
region.
Freshwater and hypersaline lakes in arid and semi-arid environments are crucial from agricultural, industrial, and ecological perspectives. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the effect of salinity on evaporation from water surfaces. The main achievement of this research is the successful capture of simulated climate–surface interactions prevalent in the Canadian Prairies using a custom-built bench-scale atmospheric simulator. Test results indicated that the evaporative flux has a large variation during spring (water/brine: 1452/764 10−4 g·s−1·m−2 and 613/230 × 10−4 g·s−1·m−2 night) and summer (1856/1187 × 10−4 g·s−1·m−2 day and 1059/394 × 10−4g·s−1·m−2 night), and small variation in the fall (1591/915 × 10−4 g·s−1·m−2 and 1790/1048 × 10−4 g·s−1·m−2 night). The primary theoretical contribution of this research is that the evaporation rate from distilled water is twice that of saturated brine. The measured data for water correlated well with mathematical estimates; data scatter was evenly distributed and within one standard deviation of the equality line, whereas the brine data mostly plotted above the equality line. The newly developed 2:1 water–brine correlation for evaporation was found to follow the combination equations with the Monteith model best matching the measurements.
Midwinter melts in the Canadian prairies: energy balance and hydrological effects