Accounting for fine-scale forest structure is necessary to model snowpack mass and energy budgets in montane forests

Accurately modeling the effects of variable forest structure and change on snow distribution and persistence is critical to water resource management. The resolution of many snow models is too coarse to represent heterogeneous canopy structure in forests, and therefore, most models simplify forest effects on snowpack mass and energy budgets. To quantify the loss of snowpack prediction from simplifications of forest canopy-mediated processes, we applied a high-resolution energy balance snowpack model at two forested sites at a fine (1 m²) and coarse (100 m²) spatial resolution. Simulating open and forested areas separately, as is done in many land surface models (LSMs), leads to biases between the coarse and fine-scale simulations because there is no representation of areas that are near (e.g.,