Dr. Painter near the Senator Beck Tower, San Juan Mountains, CO. This site is used in the NSF project "Radiative effects of desert dust deposits in alpine snow"

Multi-Resolution Snow Products for the Hydrologic Sciences

The project is developing a new set of products - snow-covered area, albedo, and snow-water equivalence - that fuse optical and microwave data and that incorporate spatial heterogeneity into the analysis.

Radiative Effects of Desert Dust Deposits in Alpine Snow

Each winter and spring, the Colorado Plateau emits dust storms of magnitudes great enough to cover the alpine snow-covered ranges of Colorado with dust layers that significantly decrease snow albedo and accentuate the evolution of the snowpack. This study will investigate the frequency and magnitude of dust deposition events, their temporal impact on snow albedo, and the relative contributions of global, regional, and local impurity sources.