Airborne light detection and ranging mapping of snow depth has emerged as a technology to map basin wide

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 developing frameworks for constructing snow datasets from multiple sources and testing water supply forecasting approaches, and another to CK Blueshift LLC to quantify the strengths and limitations of different snow monitoring technologies in improving water supply forecasts. The goal is to identify cost-effective ways to combine these technologies to meaningfully improve operational streamflow forecasts in different hydroclimatic settings across the western U.S.

Snow water equivalent at a snapshot in time, with potential to improve water supply forecasts. How best to use this emerging snow monitoring technology to improve water supply forecasts remains an outstanding question. This project addresses this problem by considering alternative methods to fuse existing and emerging snowpack data, and then. Systematically measure the resultant gains in water supply forecasting skill afforded by incrementally including more lidar data. Distinct snow water equivalent datasets will be used to train, and then validate, a water supply forecasting system. The project will characterize how water supply forecasting skill changes with the number and timing of lidar surveys utilized and the snow data fusion approach. The project will focus on multiple basins in three study.