Page 28 - aruba-today-20180106

A28 SCIENCE
Saturday 6 January 2018

Attention backcountry skiers: Scientists want your help

By DAN JOLING water comes from spring
Associated Press and summer melt.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska NASA in February began a
(AP) — America’s space multiyear research project
agency wants you to head to improve the accuracy
for the mountains with a of its snow measurements
smartphone and a mea- with partners in Europe and
suring stick. Canada, trying to solve
NASA’s earth science arm challenges such as detect-
is funding research that ing snow through trees.
recruits citizen scientists on The grant awarded to Hill,
skis, snowshoes and snow- Anthony Arendt of the Uni-
mobiles to measure the versity of Washington and
depth of snow in back- Gabriel Wolken, a research
country locations in the Pa- geologist with the Alaska
cific Northwest and Alaska. Division of Geological &
Their measurements will be Geophysical Surveys, is not
incorporated into comput- directly connected to that
er models that calculate project but has a mutual
how much water will end interest, said Kevin Murphy,
up in the region’s rivers and a program executive for
reservoirs. science data systems at
Early results have been NASA headquarters.
promising. “We decided about two
“Our initial model runs years ago to start this pro-
show that citizen science gram, which really looks at
measurements are doing how can we harness the This April, 2017, photo provided by the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys
an amazing job of improv- creativity and the capabili- shows geologist Katreen Wikstrom Jones using an avalanche probe to measure snow depth at
ing our simulations,” said ties of citizens to augment Thompson Pass, Alaska.
David Hill, an Oregon State a lot of our satellite or air- to supplement that with onto a smartphone app. could gather themselves.
University professor of civil craft measurements,” Mur- people. Participants are asked to When NASA announced
engineering, who is col- phy said. “We want to turn the public repeat that several times grants for citizen scientist
laborating with Alaska and Snow telemetry stations into these mobile snow te- and average the measure- projects, the researchers
University of Washington maintained by the U.S. Ag- lemetry stations,” he said. ments. jumped to apply, Wolken
researchers. riculture Department are “You just need a probe to The app records the loca- said.
They received one of another important tool for do it.” tion and time of the mea- Preliminary calculations
16 NASA citizen science measuring snow in high-el- The measuring device surement and uploads the have been “striking,” Hill
grants for the project. evation and other hard-to- can be as rudimentary as information. The program said, and the subject of a
The snowpack measure- access places, Hill said. The a yardstick, Hill said, but accounts for measure- paper written by a doctor-
ments are incorporated unmanned stations collect most people venturing into ments in continental cli- al student.
into computer models data using a system of au- mountains already carry mate locations with light, “He has results that basi-
estimating “snow-water tomated sensors. an avalanche probe, a 5- dry snow or the wet, dense cally show that the errors
equivalent,” the amount But too few of them exist, to 6-meter stick that folds snow of maritime climates. in our modeled snow-wa-
of liquid water contained Hill said. “They’re expensive down like a tent pole. After Initial measurements were ter equivalent are cut by
in snow cover, of a water- to install, they’re expensive an avalanche, the probes made last winter in Alas- about 90 percent with this
shed. to maintain, so there just are used to feel for buried ka’s Thompson Pass north input from public,” Hill said.
In western states, accord- aren’t that many.” people. Probes typically of Valdez, where other “We’re thrilled about that.”
ing to NASA, nearly three- The citizen snow-measur- carry measurement mark- snow research was being Other NASA grants in the
fourths of annual stream ing program, Community ings. conducted. program will use citizen sci-
flow that provides drinking Snow Observations , aims “You want to know when “I recruited some of the entists to collect data on
you actually find that per- folks from Valdez Ava- mosquito populations and
son how deep they are,” lanche Center. They their breeding environ-
Hill said. “They’re really just brought friends along,” ments around the world,
a big, long ruler.” said Wolken, the Alaska water depths in lakes in
For the citizen science pro- research geologist. “That North Carolina and else-
gram, an online tutorial was our first go at getting where, moisture in soil at
tells participants to find un- sort of a grassroots, citizen various locations, chang-
disturbed snow, push the science team.” es in giant kelp across
probe firmly to the ground, The hundreds of measure- the globe, and images of
read the depth in centi- ments collected far out- clouds from the ground in
meters and enter the data paced what the scientists Colorado.q