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Help hydrologists from the University of Washington analyze forest-snow interception patterns by examining timelapse photos.
Learn moreParticipate in characterizing images at our snowy sites around the world. We have a new field sites in Switzerland and Alaska, so please follow the provided tutorial to be sure you are selecting the correct choice!
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About Snow Spotter
Watersheds can be dominated by forests and snow provides a natural storage of fresh water. Forests can intercept up to 60% of the total annual snowfall and 25-45% of the intercepted snow can be lost from the watershed back to the atmosphere through sublimation (the process of solid snow turning into water vapor). Thus, forest interception plays a vital role in our understanding of how much snow is in forests.
The photography will give us a qualitative rank/order description of how much snow is in the trees and how long this snow lasts. With your help, we hope to better understand forest-snow interception and how much freshwater storage we have to last us through the dry season.
When helping to classify, you will be directed to different images and be prompted to determine if there is snow in the trees. Don't be worried if some of the images are fringe cases where you cannot decide how to rank it — just make your best guess or let us know you are unsure. We will do the rest!