The Center for Snow & Avalanche Studies serves the mountain science community and regional resource managers by hosting & conducting interdisciplinary research and conducting integrative 24/7/365 monitoring that captures weather, snowpack, radiation, soils, plant community and hydrologic signals of regional climate trends.
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Summer and Fall 2005 were busy with finishing up projects begun in 2004 and earlier. Soil sensor arrays for our 'dust on snow research' (NSF Grant No. ATM-0431955) were installed at the Senator Beck and Swamp Angel Study Plots. The trailrace on the Senator Beck Stream Gauge that we began in 2004, but couldn't complete due to high stream flows, was finished during very low stream flows in August. The Blue Point and Willow cleanup project begun in 2004 was brought to near completion by Outward Bound service crews. And, with the assistance of NASA, we installed the second-highest sun-tracking photometer in the global AERONET system of over 100 sensors.
On Octber 21, 2005 the CSAS co-hosted, with the University of Colorado - CIRES, a Snow System Science Workshop gathering together a small national collection of graduate students, researchers, agency staff, NSF staff, NGO staff, and congressional staff. This informal, one-day session was held in Boulder and enabled a diverse group to "think out loud" about the themes and challenges of snow system science, and the needs of snow system stakeholders. Winter 2005/2006 saw new and ongoing research projects, progress on our Blue Point cleanup, and some national publicity for our dust-on-snow research.