Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Relating to, growing in or under, or living on snow cover.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Abounding with snow; snowy.
- Growing amid snow, or flowering during winter: as, nival plants.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective obsolete Abounding with snow; snowy.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective obsolete Abounding with
snow ;snowy .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Subarctic – nival: dominated by spring snowmelt events, with peak water levels often the product of backwater from ice jams.
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Arctic – nival: continuous permafrost where deep infiltration is impeded by perennially frozen strata, base flow and winter flow are low, and snowmelt is the major hydrologic event.
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In the present climate, most streams and rivers originating within the Arctic have a nival regime in which snowmelt produces high flows and negligible flow occurs in winter.
Effects of climate change on general hydro-ecology in the Arctic 2009
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It consists of montane to altimontane beech, and mixed beech forests, submontane to altimontane spruce and spruce-fir forests, and alpine vegetation in the European Alps. It also includes small portions of submontane acidophilous oak and mixed oak forests, nemoral, sub - and oro-Mediterranean pine forests, and nival and sub-nival vegetation of the high mountains.
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They demonstrated that most rivers are very sensitive to temperature rises on the order of 1 to 3 ºC, and that nival (snow-dominated) rivers become less stable while pluvial (rain-dominated) rivers become more stable.
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Groundwater contributions are larger than those in arctic – nival systems.
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Stream flow is nival, and carries DOC-enriched spring runoff from peaty catchments to Toolik Lake.
Effects of climate change on hydro-ecology of contributing basins in the Arctic 2009
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Based on physiographic types, five altitudinal vegetation zones have been identified within Lorentz National Park: lowland zone, montane zone, subalpine zone, alpine zone, and nival zone.
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Open sub-nival plant communities found in rock and talus substrates at the elevation of 3,000-4,000 m.
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The Tibetan Plateau, treeless except in the southeastern river valleys, supports a range of alpine vegetation types that includes meadow, steppe, cold desert and sub-nival cushion plant communities at elevations ranging from 3,500 to nearly 6,000 meters (m).
qms commented on the word nival
Super Bowl XLIX: New England 28, Seattle 24
The landscape of hope was cold and nival
And bleak were the chances of survival,
But a foolhardy foe
Can melt fields of snow
And invite blessed rescue’s arrival.
February 2, 2015