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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CSAS News: Sept 2009
“Dust in the Wind and other Winds of Change” was the theme of the Colorado River Water Conservation District’s Annual Water Seminar in Grand Junction, Colorado on September 18th, 2009. CODOS collaborator chaired a panel discussion under the title “What’s the Dirty Secret of Dirty Snow” during which he presented an update on our research findings and Jayne Belnap of the US Geologic Survey’s Southwest Biological Science Center in Moab, Utah discussed her research on dust emissions from the Colorado Plateau region. Following them, Dan Crabtree, the Bureau of Reclamation’s Water Resources Group Chief at the Western Colorado Area Office in Grand Junction, described in detail how the runoff of 2009 was managed in their Aspinall Unit on the Gunnison River, and how information from our Colorado Dust-on-Snow program had been on target in describing the likely acceleration of runoff caused by dust-on-snow in that watershed. Bill Reed from NOAA’s Colorado River Basin Forecasting Center finished the panel discussion. Regional water managers from the Western Slope, state legislators, key Bureau of Reclamation staff from the Lower Basin, and Assistant U.S. Secretary if the Interior for Water and Science Anne Castle were present for the panel discussion and the Bureau of Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Region has since joined the Western Colorado Area Office in supporting our CODOS work in Water Year 2010.