Who is CSAS?
The Center for Snow & Avalanche Studies (CSAS) is an independent, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. CSAS and its 720 acre, alpine Senator Beck Basin Study Area (SBB) was established in 2003 to foster new research on mountain snowpack processes and to monitor for and detect climate-driven and other changes in regional mountain snow systems. SBB is located in a critically wet and cold portion of the Colorado River Basin (CRB) in the western San Juan Mountains, the first major mountain system downwind of the desert Southwest and Colorado Plateau, is well situated to enable monitoring and understanding of Upper CRB warming, drought, changes in precipitation phase, and other emerging processes such as dust-on-snow. Climate change researchers around the world have recognized mountains as a sensitive bellwether of global and regional change, where system responses may be more transparent and perhaps quicker than in lower elevation settings. Four continuously operating monitoring stations, including a stream gauging station, are operated by CSAS at SBB. Year-round automated measurements are complemented by other manual measurements.
How else is CSAS relevant to Colorado River Basin ?
SBB is the primary sentry site for the CSAS’s Colorado Dust-on-Snow program (CODOS), an applied science program for stakeholders in the CRB. SBB datasets provide a rare platform for development of refined snowmelt models that could improve the Community Hydrologic Prediction System at NOAA River Forecast Centers. Numerous studies, including the Basin Study, have identified the need for improved monitoring in the CRB. SBB data are critical to ongoing research on the impacts of mountain system warming and other hydrologic forcings, providing the basis for many recent peer-reviewed publications. SBB also provides a unique platform for development and validation of remote sensing technologies and characterizations of snowcover conditions and water content. Datasets from the high elevation, alpine SBB capture previously under-represented snow processes.
Who relies on Senator Beck Basin for data, field research, and operations?
CSAS hosts field studies at SBB and/or provides SBB data for academic and agency research projects focused on snow and mountain hydrology, mountain climate, and mountain ecology. Currently, several research teams are developing and testing new technologies for snowpack SWE monitoring (Boise State Univ., ACE-CRREL, JPL,PMOD-WRC), improving snowmelt models (NCAR, ACE-ERDC), developing remote sensing algorithms for snowmelt forcing by dust (JPL/UCLA, W), and exploring long-wave radiation effects on mountain system warming (Columbia, Rutgers). In operational contexts, the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center (CBRFC) uses CODOS Updates and Alerts to modify their quantitative streamflow forecasts for spring runoff in the Upper CRB, and the National Weather Service in Grand Junction, CO also use CSAS data.
Colorado Dust-on-Snow (CODOS) History:
The Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies is home to “CODOS”, the Colorado Dust-on-Snow program, an applied science effort funded directly by a collaboration of Colorado and regional water management agencies. Research funded in 2004 by National Science Foundation Grant #ATM0431955 showed that winter and spring depositions of desert dust from the Colorado Plateau onto Colorado’s mountain snowpacks can dramatically reduce snowcover albedo, advance snowmelt timing, enhance snowmelt runoff intensity, and decrease snowmelt runoff yields (see Geophysical Research Letter, 2007 and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010).
CSAS engaged Colorado’s water management community during the summer of 2006 and has been presenting these findings ever since, at quarterly board meetings of local water districts, Colorado Water Congress and Colorado Water Workshop sessions, regional IBCC Colorado Roundtable sessions, and other technical meetings hosted by the Bureau of Reclamation. With direct funding support from those stakeholders, CODOS monitors the presence/absence of dust layers at ten mountain pass locations throughout the State. With those data, and data from nearby Snotel sites, and given the weather forecasts for those watersheds, CODOS provides its funders and their agency partners with a series of “Update” analyses of how dust-on-snow islikely to influence snowmelt timing and rates during the snowmelt runoff season. That information assists reservoir operators, municipal and agricultural water providers, flood risk managers, and others at local, State, and Federal agencies responsible for managing the spring runoff water that is so vital to Colorado and to states downstream on the Colorado, Rio Grande, North and South Platte, and Arkansas rivers.The Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies is home to “CODOS”, the Colorado Dust-on-Snow program, an applied science effort funded directly by a collaboration of Colorado and regional water management agencies. Research funded in 2004 by National Science Foundation Grant #ATM0431955 showed that winter and spring depositions of desert dust from the Colorado Plateau onto Colorado’s mountain snowpacks can dramatically reduce snowcover albedo, advance snowmelt timing, enhance snowmelt runoff intensity, and decrease snowmelt runoff yields (see Geophysical Research Letter, 2007 and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010).
CSAS engaged Colorado’s water management community during the summer of 2006 and has been presenting these findings ever since, at quarterly board meetings of local water districts, Colorado Water Congress and Colorado Water Workshop sessions, regional IBCC Colorado Roundtable sessions, and other technical meetings hosted by the Bureau of Reclamation. With direct funding support from those stakeholders, CODOS monitors the presence/absence of dust layers at ten mountain pass locations throughout the State. With those data, and data from nearby Snotel sites, and given the weather forecasts for those watersheds, CODOS provides its funders and their agency partners with a series of “Update” analyses of how dust-on-snow islikely to influence snowmelt timing and rates during the snowmelt runoff season. That information assists reservoir operators, municipal and agricultural water providers, flood risk managers, and others at local, State, and Federal agencies responsible for managing the spring runoff water that is so vital to Colorado and to states downstream on the Colorado, Rio Grande, North and South Platte, and Arkansas rivers.