CODOS UPDATE November 30: Alpine plant community survey results, colorado gives Day, Snow school
Greetings from Silverton,
Just before Thanksgiving we mostly completed pre-winter climate station maintenance tasks, we wanted to take advantage of still being able to walk to the study plots. On November 19 a storm system dumped enough snow that now means ski access only until summer. November 24 brought another storm to the high country hopefully signifying a pattern of productive storms the remainder of winter. The November 19 storm marked storm #1 in our study basin. Our storm reports will be posted the snowstudies.org website as they happen. Hopefully in a couple days another storm will hit the Colorado mountains.
Alpine Plant Community Survey Results: Every 5 years, starting in 2004, Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies has hosted an alpine plant community survey in our Senator Beck Study Basin. Plant communities are a significant factor in understanding changes in a warming climate as well as snowcover distribution and water utilization in mountain systems. Altogether, twenty-three 100′ transects are monitored at three general elevations – twelve in the alpine tundra, six at/near treeline, and the remaining five in the subalpine. The latest field effort was undertaken by Carlyn Perovich with the Forest Service (including funding support), Renee Rondeau with Natural Heritage Foundation, and Caitlin Harvey and Jonathan Coop with Western Colorado University. It was a huge effort to not only synthesize and analyze data collected during the summers of 2021 and 2022, but also ingest the overwhelming amount of data going back to 2004, to understand changes over the last 19 years. It was a massive effort undertaken by all three entities. Western Colorado University masters student Caitlin Harvey, under the supervision of Jonathan Coop, wrote her thesis on the observed changes since 2004. Download her thesis here. If you would like access to the data please email CSAS.
Snow School for Water Professionals: We have had a lot of interest in Snow School for Water Professionals to be held this February 21-23, 2024. The combination classroom and field course will begin on Wednesday morning at our office in Silverton and end on Friday afternoon (2.5 days). The class is perfect for anyone wanting to learn more about the role of snow and our mountain environments as it pertains to water resources, designed to enhance understanding of snowpack processes, snow monitoring and data. Please see details in the link above. Please email me (jderry@snowstudies.org) with any questions.
Colorado Gives Day: Thank you for considering making a donation to our efficient and productive non-profit. Colorado Gives Day, December 5, is the opportune time to donate. The Community First Foundation offers incentive funds and bonus drawings for non-profits that receive donations through Colorado Gives Day website. You can donate by following this link: www.coloradogives.org.
Your contribution will:
Continue the 20-year data collection effort at our energy balance and climate stations in Senator Beck Study Basin.
Support dust-on-snow observations and reporting across Colorado.
Support state-of-the-science research and modeling efforts.
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