Hans-Peter Marshall Developing New Snowpack Monitoring Methods for Water Forecasts
Hans-Peter Marshall takes snow density measurements.
Assistant geosciences professor and researcher Hans-Peter Marshall believes there is more to a reflection than meets the eye — especially when the eye belongs to a satellite. Since 2003, he has been providing high-resolution “ground truth” surveys of snowpack water content for satellite calibration experiments, collaborating with scientists from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Forest Service and universities in the U.S. and Europe.
Hans-Peter Marshall, his sled dog Yukon and Andy Gleason of the University of Colorado take radar measurements at 12,000 feet in an avalanche starting zone.
Using portable radar he developed while working on his Ph.D., Marshall can estimate the amount of water the snowpack represents orders of magnitude faster than gathering and weighing core samples by hand. He also uses this system to simulate airborne and satellite measurements to better understand the snow’s effect on these signals, and believes space-based “snow radar” may be key to accurately assessing depth and water content at the watershed and mountain range scale worldwide.
Marshall explained how the system works in a National Public Radio “Morning Edition” segment.
“You measure a reflection from the surface of the snow and then a reflection from the ground. You time the amount of time it takes that signal to go through. It’s on the order of nanoseconds. It’s a very short signal, but from that you can estimate the amount of water that snowpack represents,” Marshall told regional NPR reporter Tom Banse.
Marshall said that in southern Idaho where the climate is relatively dry, understanding the reservoir contained in the mountain snowpack is crucial for predicting water supply. If the research team’s work bears fruit, irrigators, drinking water utilities, dam operators and fish biologists will have an easier time assessing snowpack levels that help indicate stream flows and overall environmental health.
“More than a billion people worldwide live in places where stream flow is dominated by snow-melt, and therefore, measuring the water content of the snowpack is vital for water resource management, as well as flood and hydropower forecasting,” Marshall said, adding that he will start monitoring the snowpack at local field sites this winter.
Marshall came to Boise State this fall from the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado in Boulder and now is working with hydrologists and geophysicists at Boise State and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. His research focuses on problems involving snow and ice, and it has lead him to Antarctica, Devon Ice Cap in the Canadian Arctic, sea ice near Barrow, Alaska and the backcountry of Washington and Colorado.