First stage of new snowpack study completed

Jeff Deems of CIRES and WWA, with colleagues from NASA JPL and CRREL, is monitoring mountain snowpack depth using a novel method that combines ground-based and airborne lidar. The goal is to improve water-supply inventories and forecasts in snowmelt-dominated watersheds. Deems received a 2012 CIRES Innovative Research Program grant to conduct the project, and the team finished collecting baseline data from snow-free mountain basins in Colorado and California last fall. They will collect measurements from snow-filled basins this March through July.