Snow science in support of U.S. water supply

equipment is being used for the ground campaign, including snow pits and remote sensing instruments hoisted 40 feet in the air on boom trucks.

“The big challenge to the ground campaign is collecting high-quality field measurements while keeping everyone safe and healthy in these harsh environments,” said Kelly Elder, research hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort Collins, Colorado, who is leading the overall ground campaign.

Scientists will be working above 10,000 feet in potentially windy and freezing conditions up to 10 hours a day. They need snow goggles or sunglasses to protect their eyes. Hypothermia is a very real threat, so researchers wear special clothing designed to wick away sweat and keep them dry. The teams use snowshoes, skis and snowmobiles to access the ground measurement locations on Grand Mesa and Senator Beck Basin.

The Senator Beck Research Basin study area is near the headwaters of the Rio Grande River Basin. “Its research areas are the first major mountain systems downwind of the desert Southwest and Colorado Plateau, making it an ideal place to study the effects of dust on snowmelt,”  said Hans-Peter Marshall, of Boise State University, who is leading ground operations in Senator Beck Research Basin. “Grand Mesa was chosen for its flatness and range of forest conditions,” said Chris Hiemstra, a research physicist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the lead for the Grand Mesa ground operations. The variety of terrain and environments make the ground sites good models for developing global measurements of snow.

Ground equipment was installed in September 2016, before snow started to fall. A ground site near a campground will host specialized equipment too large to move around.  This Local Scale Observation Site effort is led by Ludovic Brucker from NASA Goddard.

Teams of fifty researchers are making ground measurements, rotating in and out of the field every week over a three-week period.

Data acquired from the SnowEx campaign will be stored at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, and will be available to anyone at no cost, as is the case with all NASA data.

After the field work, SnowEx scientists will analyze data and recommend to NASA how to proceed in the next few years. “This campaign will generate the best ideas from the global community of snow experts,” Kim said.

Senator Beck Basin is managed by the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies CSAS, a non-profit organization that hosts research studies on snowpack at the basin.