Evaluating Snow Water Equivalent and Soil Moisture in a Complex Wildfire-Impacted Area of the Rocky Mountains using a Mobile Cosmic Ray Neutron Sensor

The goals for this project are to collect repeat cosmic ray sensor transects of SWE and soil moisture in the Rocky Mountains, identify differences in water year annual trends between burned and unburned areas based on elevation, and partition snowmelt into infiltration and direct runoff to inform calibration and parameterization of future model development. To achieve these goals, the work addressing this funding opportunity must:

·      Provide processed SWE and soil moisture data from five to six mobile cosmic ray sensor data collections in the Rocky Mountains. The surveys should cover a range of snowpack and soil moisture conditions to capture the water year cycle of SWE and soil moisture in burned and unburned areas.

·      Provide data analysis to compare the annual (water year) SWE and soil moisture processes between burned and unburned areas in the Rocky Mountains.

·      Provide data analysis to inform future model development in burned and unburned areas to improve the parameterization and calibration of seasonal snowmelt by improving our understanding of direct runoff and infiltration partitioning.

·      Quality control, analyze, and document collected field data in technical reports or peer reviewed journal manuscripts.