Courses

This course will give fundamental training to students in making and analyzing snow measurements including depth, density, water equivalence, grain size and shape, stratigraphy, temperature and hardness. Students completing this course will be able to perform high-quality fieldwork and design studies making snowpack measurements.

By the end of the course, students should be able to do the following:

• Excavate and prepare a snow pit.
• Measure profiles of density, snow temperature, grain size, and hardness.
• Characterize stratigraphy and layering, snow surface roughness, and snow grain types.
• Use a Federal snow sampler, an avalanche probe, a Magnaprobe, and other snow measurement equipment.
• Design their own experiment for sampling snow based on specific scientific objectives.