The Center for Snow & Avalanche Studies enhances the interdisciplinary investigation of the snow system's behavior and role in human/environment relationships by offering resources -- people, information, and facilities -- for field-based research and education.
The goal of the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies is to build strong collaborative partnerships. First and foremost, our local San Juan Mountains public land agencies are our indispensable partners, responsible for granting and administering the CSAS's study area Special Use Permits. We work closely and share study plot data and field observations with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center staff here in Silverton and seek opportunities to collaborate with the US Forest Service National Avalanche Center in Bozeman , MT. We have established and are building substantive relationships with several American and international mountain research organizations including the Mountain Studies Institute, our sister mountain research and education organization right here in Silverton, the Consortium for Integrated Climate Research in Western Mountains, a coalition of agencies and institutions throughout the West, the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research Siteoperated by the Insititute for Arctic and Alpine Research east of Boulder Colorado, and theWSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, in Davos.
And, as the CSAS pursues its research and education objectives, we are engaging and collaborating with a number of agencies and institutions including the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, CO, US Geological Survey and its Western Mountain Initiative , the US Geological Survey, NOAA and the National Weather Service , the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research , the Natural Resource Ecology Lab and numerous colleges and universities utilizing the CSAS's services in support of their 'snow and ice' field courses here in Silverton.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences has emerged as an active and engaged partner for the CSAS through the successful funding of collaborative research. We look forward to ongoing collaboration with NSIDC and other University of Colorado departments and centers on specific research projects and in the development of the CSAS's programs.
Our collaborator, and the principal investigator in our on-going ‘dust-on-snow’ research program, Dr. Tom Painter has recently moved to Utah and taken a position in theDepartment of Geography at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Tom and his colleagues and students in his Snow Optics Laboratory there are continuing to utilize the Senator Beck Basin Study Area for this and, we hope, other snow system science research projects.
Finally, we gratefully include the National Science Foundation among our singularly important partners. In particular, program directors and research proposal reviewers at the Atmospheric Sciences and Earth Sciences programs of the Directorate for Geosciences , and the Geography and Regional Science program of the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences have all invested their helpful critical thinking and cherished funding in the CSAS's growing research program.
