Our Snow Spotter project takes a citizen science approach, where our data comes from citizen scientists, like you! The workflows on our website show different time-lapse images of snowy areas around the United States, Switzerland, and Finland. Citizen scientists will determine the amount of snow that they see in the tree canopy.

 

During the winter season, the development of the mountain snowpack plays a dominant role in water availability during the summer and fall. Forest cover has a large impact on this development, as trees intercept up to 60% of snow that would normally integrate with the snowpack below. Once snow is intercepted by forests, it can unload into the snowpack below through melting and sluffing, or, if it remains in the canopy for long enough, it can sublimate (transitioning directly from a solid to a gas) back into the atmosphere. Sublimation can result in up to 25-45% of intercepted snow being released back into the atmosphere, resulting in significant effects on snowpack depth, and therefore, on water availiability. 

 

This process is difficult to observe as it occurs in remote areas across a vast spatial distribution. Zooniverse provides a platform where we can quickly and efficiently create a data set to mediate this problem, capturing canopy snow across both time and space. As we continue to upload images, Snow Spotter participants help to grow this data set so that it may be available for future research.