The Bureau of Reclamation awarded a $1,060,448 Cooperative Agreement on December 20, 2023, under the Snow Water Supply Forecasting Program (CFDA 15.078) to The Regents of the University of Colorado. This grant aims to improve water supply forecasts by enhancing snow monitoring through the deployment of emerging technologies, such as airborne LiDAR, and better integration of snow data into forecasting models. The project has two sub-awards - one to Oregon State University to assist in...
The Bureau of Reclamation awarded a $1,094,619 Cooperative Agreement to the Desert Research Institute (DRI) at the Nevada System of Higher Education under the Snow Water Supply Forecasting Program (CFDA 15.078). The project aims to enhance water supply forecasting in the western U.S. by deploying a novel non-contact infrared snow temperature profiler (STP) to measure vertical snow temperature profiles during federal snow survey operations. This data will be used to validate and improve...
The Bureau of Reclamation awarded a $1,003,256.99 Cooperative Agreement to Applied Research Team Inc. on January 4, 2024 under the Snow Water Supply Forecasting Program (CFDA 15.078). This project aims to demonstrate how the combination of weather radar data and ground-based monitoring can effectively measure snow water equivalent (SWE) at high resolution. The project will focus on multiple headwater watersheds in the Upper Colorado River Basin and the Rio Grande River Basin, utilizing both...
The Bureau of Reclamation awarded a $1,084,428 Cooperative Agreement to the Regents of the University of Colorado under the Snow Water Supply Forecasting program (CFDA 15.078) to develop a Surface Snow Water Equivalent Data Fusion System (SWE-Fusion) for the western United States. The primary objective is to provide improved surface snow water equivalent estimates to enable better decision-making during anomalous hydrologic conditions like drought and flooding. The University will combine...
This Cooperative Agreement award from the Bureau of Reclamation under the Snow Water Supply Forecasting Program (CFDA 15.078) provides $1,228,743.28 to enhance water supply forecasting capabilities across western U.S. basins. The project will acquire aerial LiDAR snow survey data in the McKenzie River Basin (Oregon) and over 33 other basins to identify unique snowpack dynamics not captured by existing monitoring networks. The team will evaluate how incorporating this additional snow data can...
This Cooperative Agreement award from the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation under the Snow Water Supply Forecasting Program (CFDA 15.078) provides $1,340,879.80 to Mountain Hydrology LLC to conduct a 3-year project focused on improving snow monitoring and water supply forecasting in the Wind River Range of Wyoming. The key products and services to be delivered include: 1) Conducting annual spring airborne LiDAR snow surveys over 10 watersheds in the Wind River Range to...
This Cooperative Agreement award from the Bureau of Reclamation under the Snow Water Supply Forecasting Program (CFDA 15.078) provides $1,224,810.85 to Montana State University to address deficiencies in current snow monitoring through the deployment of emerging snow observation technologies. The project aims to enhance spatial characterization of snow cover using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) gamma-ray and LiDAR measurements, coupled with ground-based cosmic ray and gamma-ray snow water...
The Bureau of Reclamation awarded a $1,078,490.19 Cooperative Agreement to the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District (Northern Water) under the Snow Water Supply Forecasting program (CFDA 15.078) to conduct airborne snow surveys over the Colorado River headwaters. Over the next 3 years, Northern Water will partner with Airborne Snow Observatories, Inc. to perform 3 airborne snow surveys per year during the spring runoff period. The data collected from these surveys, along with ISNOBAL...
This Cooperative Agreement award from the Bureau of Reclamation under the Snow Water Supply Forecasting Program (CFDA 15.078) will develop an advanced snow estimation product using long short-term memory (LSTM) modeling. The $1,270,676.70 project, awarded on January 30, 2025, will leverage near-daily CubeSat data, ground observations, and LiDAR snow maps to enhance a process-based distributed hydrologic model for the Salt and Verde River basins in Arizona. The resulting LSTM-based snow water...
This $645,270 Cooperative Agreement award from the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation under the SECURE Water Act - Research Agreements program (CFDA 15.560) will fund the incorporation of remotely sensed surface and atmospheric variables into a spatially distributed, process-based snowmelt model. The award will support postdoctoral researchers to implement model updates and assess improvements, with the objective of advancing the physically-based and distributed modeling...