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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In March 2009 Dr. Hans-Peter Marshall returned to Silverton for another intensive field campaign in Senator Beck Basin, collecting literally millions of snowpack profiles throughout the Basin with his highly portable FMCW snow-penetrating radar system.
Hans-Peter Marshall and Andy Gleason, his long-time partner in these radar campaigns, begin making measurements as soon as they leave the parking area, climbing uphill on skis with climbing skins, side-by-side, sometimes for hours, with the radar system deployed on a pole between them. Here they are seen approaching treeline on the way to the Senator Beck Study Plot. A precision GPS antenna is seen protruding from Andy’s pack, capturing precise location information for each radar profile, on the fly.
The radar team regroups at Senator Beck Study Plot – Dr. Jeff Deems (right foreground) and PhD student James McCreight (on left with back to camera) are also routine members of the radar team.
In addition to his radar measurements, HP is seen here taking a near-infra-red (NIR) image of a snowpit wall at the Senator Beck Study Plot. This technique was presented by HP and Dr. Martin Schneebeli in a small workshop for researchers hosted by the CSAS in March 2008. Details in these images can be compared with snowpack properties detected by HP’s FMCW radar and other observations regarding snow density and other properties.