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WASHINGTON – Reclamation is awarding $11 million in federal funding to 15 projects to support the advancement of the use of snow monitoring technologies for water supply forecasting.

Reclamation’s Research and Development Office sought proposals for projects that demonstrate and/or deploy technologies in emerging snow monitoring, deploy existing snow monitoring technologies in underserved areas, or improve the use of snow monitoring data to enhance water supply forecasts.

Projects awarded include $11 million in federal funding and $6.2 million in cost share funding, totaling over $17 million in investment for snow monitoring.

Projects awarded funding include:

• Applied Research Team, Inc.: Mapping Snow Water Equivalent with Weather Radar.
• Colorado River Authority of Utah: Flakes, Flights, and Forecasts: Snowpack Measurement Enhancements in the Uinta Mountain Headwaters
• Colorado State University:
  • Integrating field, remote sensing, and physics-based models to improve water supply forecasts in wildfire-impacted basins in the Western United States.
  • Demonstration and evaluation of a Cosmic Ray Neutron Rover as an emerging snow monitoring technology.
• Hydroinnova LLC: Cosmic-ray snow gauges for monitoring snow water equivalent.
• Montana State University: Emerging UAV gamma-ray and LiDAR snow observations for improved water supply modeling in the Missouri headwaters.
• Mountain Hydrology LLC: Airborne Snow Surveys for Water Supply Forecasting in the Wind River Range, WY.
• Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District: Watersheds through Adapting Blended SWE and Snow Albedo Products
• The Desert Research Institute: Developing a Cooperative Snow Temperature Survey.
• The University of Colorado:
  • Does integration of airborne lidar with existing snow monitoring technologies improve water supply forecasts in the western United States?
  • Snow water equivalent data fusion for the Western U.S. to support water resources management.
• Truckee-Carson Irrigation District: Airborne Snow Observatory Driven Forecasting in the Truckee-Carson Basins.
• University of Arizona: Improving Water Supply Forecasting in the Colorado Basin with 40+ years of Gridded Snowpack Data.
• University of Oklahoma: Improving the skill of reservoir inflow forecasts over the Colorado River basin using high-resolution snow monitoring data and Explainable Artificial Intelligence models.
• University of Wyoming: Seasonal Snow Water Supply Forecast guided by the Climatic Oscillation using the Non-Gaussian Information Metrics for the Inland Basins.

For more information on each project visit the program website. Reclamation’s Snow Water Supply Forecast Program aims to enhance snow monitoring and advance emerging technologies in snow monitoring for the benefit of water supply forecasting. The program activities stand to build climate change resilience by enabling improved water management.