Chris Landry, the Executive Director of the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies, performs a formal, full depth snow profile during the winter of 2005/2006 for our ‘dust-on-snow' research project (NSF Grant #ATM-0431955).

Beginning in the winter of 2002/2003, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (Dr. Tom Painter, PI, now at the University of Utah) and the CSAS began a collaborative research effort investigating the effects of desert dust deposition on snowpack albedo and snowmelt.  Here, Chris Landry, the Executive Director of the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies, performs a formal, full depth formal snow profile during the winter of 2005/2006.  The National Science Foundation provided initial funding for the winters of 2004/2005, 2005/2006, and 2006/2007 (NSF Grant #ATM-0431955).   Results from the first phase of this research, recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (Vol. 34, No. 12), triggered additional funding for the CSAS from regional water conservation districts throughout Colorado as well supplemental funding for our collaborators at NSIDC from the Western Water Assessment program at the University of Colorado.  The project is now focused on providing timely dust-on-snow observations and developing snowmelt modeling tools to water managers and streamflow forecasters so that they can include the very significant effects of dust present in mountain snowpacks into their forecasts of snowmelt timing and intensity.