NASA last week that both the 91̽�� STRIVE team and the UW-affiliated EDGE team were selected to lead satellite missions to better understand Earth and improve capabilities to foresee environmental events and mitigate disasters.

STRIVE and EDGE were among four finalists as part of the agency’s Earth System Explorers Program, which conducts principal investigator-led space science missions as recommended by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2017 Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from Space.

The total estimated cost of each mission, not including launch, will not exceed $355 million with a mission launch date of no earlier than 2030, stated NASA.

“This was fantastic news. We have been working on this concept for a few years now, and for many of us it is a dream come true. To be able to observe the atmosphere at this level of detail is a tremendous opportunity,” said , a 91̽��professor of atmospheric and climate science, who is leading the STRIVE mission.

Stratosphere-Troposphere Response using Infrared Vertically-resolved light Explorer

, which stands for Stratosphere-Troposphere Response using Infrared Vertically-resolved light Explorer, will examine the regions of the atmosphere where weather forms and the ozone layer sits, yielding new insights into temperature and trace gases in the atmosphere that affect aviation, long-range transport of volcanic smoke and air pollution.

The STRIVE instruments, compact enough to fit into the trunk of a midsize SUV, can make more than 400,000 observations each day. Instead of looking straight down at the Earth, like other missions, the STRIVE instruments angle sideways towards Earth’s surface to capture the atmosphere in greater detail.

“With these observations, we won’t just get measurements of ozone but rather all the chemical species that affect ozone in the stratosphere,” Jaeglé said.

The ozone layer, which absorbs ultraviolet radiation, after severe depletion in the early 2000s, but still requires careful monitoring.

STRIVE represents a technological and scientific quantum leap that will help researchers understand how air pollution circulates following a wildfire or volcanic eruption, for example. Importantly, STRIVE will also aid weather forecasting efforts beyond the typical 10-day window to give people time to prepare for extreme weather events.

“If we can see something propagating from high up — such as large shifts in winds —��then we will know that several weeks later it will impact Earth’s surface. Our current weather models cannot predict this connection very well because we don’t really know what is going on at the interface of the stratosphere and troposphere,” Jaeglé added.

The national-scale team includes partners from academia, industry and federal science labs. at the University of Iowa is the deputy principal investigator of STRIVE, and at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is the project scientist. Several NASA Goddard scientists are also involved. Other 91̽��members of STRIVE are professor , assistant professor and affiliate faculty member , all in the 91̽��Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science.

The Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer��

, or Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer, uses lasers to observe the three dimensional structure of Earth’s surface — including forests, glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice — as it changes. , a senior principal physicist and , a senior research scientist both at the 91̽�� and , a 91̽��associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, are part of the EDGE team, led by from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.

EDGE will be the first global satellite imaging laser altimeter system, according to . The system captures surface detail in high resolution by firing laser pulses at the Earth and recording how long it takes for them to return, making over 150,000 measurements each second. It can also precisely track changes in surface elevation over time to capture how ice sheets and glaciers are responding to climate change over seasonal and longer-term timescales.

“What’s really exciting about EDGE is the level of detail it will measure. Older laser altimetry measurements sample a coarse grid of points on the ground, but with the EDGE data we will be able to see individual trees around Seattle, and small cracks in glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. Often, it’s the fine-scale processes that drive how the large-scale system changes,” Smith said.

Although the effort will focus on polar regions, forests and coastlines, EDGE is an “everything mission,” Shean said.

“These precise surface elevation change measurements are essential for so many pressing scientific and engineering applications,” he added. “The EDGE data will have implications for sea level rise, natural hazards monitoring, water resource and forest management, and wildfire response. This is also a major milestone for UW, as it formalizes 91̽��leadership and involvement on not one, but two NASA Earth Observation missions. I’m excited to bring students onto the EDGE team and train the next generation of 91̽��researchers who will do amazing things with EDGE data in the coming decades.”

For more information on STRIVE, contact Jaeglé at jaegle@uw.edu.

A project led by the 91̽�� to better understand our atmosphere’s complexity is a finalist for NASA’s next generation of Earth-observing satellites. The space agency this week the projects that will each receive $5 million to advance to the next stage and conduct a one-year concept study.

seeks to better understand the troposphere that we inhabit and the stratosphere above it, where the ozone layer is, as well as the interface where these two layers meet. That interface, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the surface, is where important atmospheric chemistry, circulation and climate processes occur.

In addition to STRIVE, two other teams among the finalists also include researchers from the UW.

The four teams that reached the proof-of-concept stage will spend the next year refining their proposals. NASA will then review the concept study reports and select two for implementation. Projects that reach the final stage will have a budget of up to $310 million to build the instruments, which NASA will launch into orbit in 2030 or 2032. The satellites are expected to have an initial working life of two to three years.

, professor of atmospheric sciences at the UW, is principal investigator of STRIVE, or “Stratosphere Troposphere Response using Infrared Vertically-Resolved Light Explorer.” The national-scale team includes partners from academia, industry and federal science labs.

The two instruments aboard the STRIVE spacecraft would observe temperature, ozone, water vapor, methane, reactive gases, smoke and other aerosol particles. They will collect 400,000 sets of observations every day — hundreds to thousands of times more than what’s possible now. Instead of looking straight down at the Earth, the STRIVE instruments point at an angle to Earth’s surface, allowing them to capture the atmospheric layers in greater detail.

These observations could help to monitor how the UV-absorbing ozone layer is rebuilding or deteriorating in the atmosphere; how smoke particles from volcanoes, wildfires or human emissions travel through the atmosphere and influence air quality; and how water vapor, ozone, and high-elevation clouds influence the climate system.

The STRIVE system would also support longer-range weather forecasts.

“Before a major weather event at the surface, there can be precursor signs that happen in the stratosphere,” Jaeglé said. “And we see those weeks ahead of time. Observing the stratosphere and how these signals propagate down will be key to getting better weather forecasts on subseasonal to seasonal scales, so two weeks to two months in advance.”

As several NASA satellites of their working lifetimes, the agency is looking for future possibilities to continue their legacy of tracking Earth’s changes.

“For observing the Earth, before we’ve had these multibillion-dollar instruments and platforms that take much longer to design and to put in operation. I think the overall idea is to move to a nimbler, faster set of satellite missions that will be designed more quickly and cost less,” Jaeglé said. “NASA will still pursue the bigger missions, but these smaller missions are another tool that they’re moving forward with.”

at the University of Iowa is the deputy principal investigator of STRIVE, and at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is the project scientist. Several NASA Goddard scientists are also involved. Other 91̽��members of STRIVE are professor , assistant professor and affiliate faculty member , all in the 91̽��Department of Atmospheric Sciences.

Other institutions include the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NorthWest Research Associates, Science Systems and Applications, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the University of Colorado-Boulder, the University of Toronto and Morgan State University.

The STRIVE team will spend the next year developing a report with an in-depth engineering, cost and technical analysis.

“It’s extremely exciting. This was a team effort, with many people involved,” Jaeglé said. “Also a bit daunting because the next year will be a very busy one, but very exciting for how to make these concepts become a reality.”

Two other projects among the four finalists also involve 91̽��scientists

The proposal, led by the University of California, San Diego, proposes a new laser instrument to measure the height of vegetation, glaciers and polar ice sheets.

“The current state-of-the-art for satellite laser altimetry, the satellites that measure surface height, is ICESat-2, which has six laser beams. GEDI, on the International Space Station, has eight beams. EDGE will have 40 laser beams, so the level of detail is just much, much higher,” said , a research scientist at the 91̽��Applied Physics Laboratory who’s a member of the ICESat-2 science team and is an investigator on the EDGE proposal.

The EDGE satellite would collect data for the world’s forests with the ability to resolve individual trees. Unlike existing satellites it would span all latitudes, from the boreal forests to the equator, surveying dense rainforests to sparser temperate woodlands. EDGE would also observe polar ice sheets and glaciers worldwide, including in the Western U.S., Alaska and the Himalayas, where populations rely on meltwater for hydropower, agriculture and household use.

“It’s very nimble, so it can be off-pointed to collect very dense 3D measurements over priority areas,” said , a 91̽��assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering who is also involved with EDGE. “So for example, we could scan the entire Nisqually Glacier on Mount Rainier, and potentially many other Pacific Northwest glaciers, in a single pass.”

STRIVE science team member Alex Turner is also a member of the proposal led by CalTech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Carbon-I would sample carbon dioxide and methane gases, tracking both emissions and sinks in places like the Amazon rainforest. It would have a global resolution of 300 meters, or about the length of three football fields, and could zoom in to a resolution of just 100 feet (30 meters) to investigate particular sources.

“We suspect that for methane in particular there are ‘superemitters,’ or a small number of sources that emit massive amounts of methane,” Turner said. “From a regulatory perspective, if you can find and fix those superemitters in a timely manner, you can cut your emissions by a pretty large amount.”

The awards are part of NASA’s new Earth System Explorers Program. The other finalist proposal is , led by the University of California, San Diego.

“As we continue to confront our changing climate, and its impacts on humans and our environment, the need for data and scientific research could not be greater,” said Nicky Fox, associate director at NASA headquarters. “These proposals will help us better prepare for the challenges we face today, and tomorrow.”

For more information on STRIVE, contact Jaeglé at jaegle@uw.edu.

The Uttarakhand region of India experienced a humanitarian tragedy on Feb. 7, 2021, when a wall of debris and water barreled down the Ronti Gad, Rishiganga and Dhauliganga river valleys.

The event began when a wedge of rock carrying a glacier broke off of a steep ridge in the Himalayan mountain range. The resulting debris flow destroyed two hydropower facilities and left more than 200 people dead or missing.

A self-organized coalition of 53 scientists came together in the days following the disaster to investigate the cause, scope and impacts. The team determined that the flood was caused by falling rock and glacier ice that melted on its descent — not by a lake or diverted river — which will help researchers and policymakers better identify emerging hazards in the region.

The study, which used satellite imagery, seismic records and eyewitness videos to produce computer models of the flow, in Science.

“On the morning of the event, I was reading the news over coffee, and saw a headline about a disaster in the Himalayas,” said co-author , a 91̽�� assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. “I sat down at the computer and pulled up the satellite images that had been acquired that morning. When I saw the dust cloud moving down the valley, I started writing emails to other scientists asking if they were working on this. One email thread quickly became five, then 10, and the response effort consumed most of our waking hours for the next two weeks.”

Initial hypotheses for the cause of the event suggested a glacial lake outburst flood. But there are no glacial lakes large enough to produce a flood anywhere near the site, the team determined.

“Our access to high-resolution satellite imagery and research software, and our expertise in satellite remote sensing were crucial to get a bird’s-eye view of how the event unfolded,” said co-author , a 91̽��doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering. “We worked with our French collaborators to coordinate satellite collections within days of the event and rapidly process the images to derive detailed topographic maps of the site.”

The researchers compared the images and topographic maps from before and after the event to document all of the changes and reconstruct the sequence of events.

“We tracked a plume of dust and water to a conspicuous dark patch high on a steep slope,” said lead author , associate professor at the University of Calgary.

The dark patch turned out to be the scar left by the 35 million cubic yards of missing rock and glacier ice — enough material to cover Washington, D.C., with a half-foot-deep layer.

“This was the source of a giant landslide that triggered the cascade of events, and caused immense death and destruction,” said Shugar, who was previously an assistant professor at 91̽��Tacoma.

The researchers also used the maps to determine how far the block of ice and rock fell.

“The failed block fell over a mile before impacting the valley floor. To put this height in context, imagine vertically stacking up 11 Space Needles or six Eiffel Towers,” Bhushan said.

Then the larger team was able to quantify how the pulverized rock and ice were redistributed over the downstream areas.

“As the block fell, most of the glacier ice melted within minutes. This resulted in a huge volume of water associated with the flooding,” Bhushan said. “This is highly unusual — a normal rock landslide or snow/ice avalanche could not have produced such huge volumes of water.”

For Bhushan, the work was personal.

“In general, doctoral research projects are very niche. I sometimes have a hard time explaining to my parents why measuring glacier dynamics is important,” Bhushan said. “But due to the scale of this disaster, my family and friends back in India were very curious to know how this event unfolded, and they were expecting me to come up with an answer. These interactions provided me with a sense of belonging and motivation that some of my research can be of such immediate use to society.”

The team also used satellite image archives to show that previous large ice masses had been dislodged from the same ridge and struck the same valley in recent years. The researchers suggest that climate change is likely increasing the frequency of such events, and that the greater magnitude of the latest disaster should be considered before further infrastructure development in the area.

“These high-mountain rivers are appealing for hydropower projects, and we need a better understanding of the full spectrum of potential high-mountain hazards,” Shean said. “We hope that lessons learned from this effort will improve our ability to respond to future disasters and guide policy decisions that will save lives.”

Shean, Bhushan and Shugar are joined by 50 additional co-authors from 14 countries. In addition to geoscientists, the co-authors list includes water policy experts and a social scientist. Shean and Bhushan were funded by the NASA High Mountain Asia Team and the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science Technology fellowship. Other co-authors received funding from a variety of government agencies including those in India, Canada, France, Germany and Switzerland. The satellite imagery the 91̽��team used was provided by MAXAR, Planet, ISRO and CNES, the French government space agency.

For more information, contact Shean at dshean@uw.edu and Bhushan at sbaglapl@uw.edu.

Grant numbers for the 91̽��team: 80NSSC20K1595, 80NSSC19K1338

is a 91̽��-wide institute connecting scholars with community partners to address environmental challenges. The institute announced awards for its 2020 on May 5.

Four research teams were chosen from 43 that applied. Proposals were reviewed by an 11-member committee including faculty and staff in several areas as well as an outside community member. This is the program’s second year.

Each team will receive up to $75,000 as well as administrative and communications support for a 16-month period ending in September 2021.

Crucially, the researchers also plan to collaborate with community partners from El Centro de la Raza locally to universities internationally for these projects. All of the community partners involved are listed on the .

Does vegetation help mitigate roadway and aircraft-related air pollution in Seattle?

, associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, is principal investigator on this community-engaged study using drones for 3D air quality measurements.

Co-investigators are professor and assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, and , professor of atmospheric sciences.

According to their proposal, “Findings from this study will provide local and highly relevant evidence on the effectiveness of urban planning initiatives that may utilize greenery as an approach to address particulate air pollution.”

Hazard planning, food sovereignty and climate adaptation in the Alaskan Arctic��

, assistant professor in the Department of American Indian Studies and the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, is this project’s principal investigator and co-director.

is a 500-person community in Northwest Alaska about 80 miles above the Arctic Circle. Sea-ice cover around this area has decreased dramatically in the last two decades, increasing coastal erosion during storms and the frequency of traveler distress calls, among other concerns.

For this research, an interdisciplinary team of 91̽��polar researchers will work with area search and rescue volunteers to help Kivalina and its residents achieve more safety, resilience and food sovereignty, and become a model of community-driven polar research. The team also plans to develop new methods in sea ice forecasting to support local decision-making, among several other goals.

Other 91̽��researchers involved are , chair and professor; and , research assistant professor, both in atmospheric sciences.

Píkyav on the Mid-Klamath River: Peeshkêesh Yáv Umúsaheesh

The flows through parts of Oregon and Northern California. Four hydroelectric dams along the river are scheduled for removal in 2022. The , in that area, is among the largest in California.

This research team proposes a river restoration process on the Klamath that centers on Karuk tribal sovereignty using a model of justice, helping to bring tribal perspectives to large-scale governance. The title of the project, they write, translates to “the river will look good” — and the phrase “goes far below the surface to include function, connection and ceremonial renewal.”

The team plans an intergenerational, field-based school on the river, working with Karuk youth and cultural practitioners to gather historical maps, stories and spatial data on Karuk uses of floodplain ecosystems.

91̽��team members for this project are , assistant professor in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs; , a lecturer in Comparative History of Ideas and the Program on the Environment; and Karuk tribal member Kimberly Yazzie, a doctoral student in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.

Lessons from urban indigenous immigrants ��

“This project will compare a self-managed indigenous immigrant community still using traditional practices in Iquitos, Peru,” the team wrote, “to a similar indigenous immigrant community nearby that developed with social and political pressures to colonially urbanize and leave traditional practices behind.”

91̽��members of the research team are , affiliate assistant professor of landscape architecture; , photographer with the 91̽��Center for One Health Research; , lecturer in the 91̽��Bothell School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences; Kathleen Wolf, research social scientist with the School of Environment and Forest Sciences; and doctoral student of the School of Public Health.

“We use an innovative, mixed-methods approach by combining indigenous knowledge, science and art to document environmental conditions, ecosystem health, traditional knowledge practices, and human-nature connections in each community,” the team wrote.

Environmental and human health impacts of a new invasive species in Madagascar

A fifth project was in March, representing the second project funded in collaboration with the 91̽��Population Health Initiative. The project’s 91̽��leads are , assistant professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences; and , professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences.

For more information, contact the EarthLab Innovation Grants program lead at elgrants@uw.edu.

This year’s 91̽��awardees are from the College of the Environment and the College of Engineering, focused on topics that include ocean wave dynamics, the behavior of glaciers and how predator-prey interactions can influence wildfires. NASA awarded about 120 fellowships for this year’s Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology program, drawing from a pool of nearly 1,000 applicants.

With this year’s fellows, the 91̽��continues its trend of consistently outcompeting other universities in its representation of fellows across all disciplines touched by NASA science, said , a 91̽��professor of civil and environmental engineering who has advised five fellows from previous years. In 2015, seven 91̽��graduate students won the fellowship, and according to records from 2007 forward, at least one 91̽��student has earned the fellowship nearly every year.

“The 91̽�� is unique in its success across all disciplines of NASA, its regular and continued performance across all years, and in what these students have gone on to do,” Lundquist said. “NASA fellows must have a unique combination of technical know-how as well as scientific understanding. This legacy highlights how 91̽��has been at the forefront of the technology and data-science revolution.”

NASA graduate fellowships provide funding for three years. Fellows at the 91̽��often go on to do research at NASA centers or become faculty members at major universities.

Several previous fellows have returned to the 91̽��as research scientists and professors, including (civil and environmental engineering) and (environmental and forest sciences). Shean and Kane are now serving as advisors for current NASA fellows at the UW.

“The NASA fellowship program provided the essential support, computing resources and training that I needed for my 91̽��Ph.D. research,” Shean said.��“I’m thrilled to see continued NASA support for top 91̽��students under this program, and excited about my new role training the next generation of NASA researchers.”

Here are this year’s fellowship winners and information about what they will study:

Benjamin Barr, atmospheric sciences

When ocean waves break in strong winds, they release showers of spray droplets into the air. These droplets transfer heat and moisture to the air, but the transfers are difficult to predict because the processes involved are complex. Barr will work with NASA to develop a model for predicting heat and moisture transfer to the atmosphere by spray, which will be incorporated into larger NASA models used to make predictions for weather and climate.

“The fellowship is a fantastic opportunity to work with NASA experts in many fields of study. It brings us into a broad community of researchers who will become our friends and colleagues during our career,” Barr said. “This exposure to researchers on the cutting edge of science is invaluable to young scientists who are developing their own research focuses.”

Shashank Bhushan, civil and environmental engineering

The mountain ranges surrounding the Tibetan Plateau have the largest concentration of glaciers outside of the polar regions. Each year, water melting from these glaciers replenishes the major river systems in the area and provides freshwater to millions of people living downstream. The glacier melt also contributes to global sea level rise.

Understanding how these glaciers behave has important implications for regional freshwater supply and sea level changes, Bhushan said. During his fellowship, Bhushan will use high-resolution satellite imagery to calculate glacier mass balance and movement patterns along the Tibetan Plateau and the surrounding region.

“I am always awestruck by the utility satellites offer in studying landform processes at remote locations, like how I can observe glaciers in High Mountain Asia from a desk in Seattle,” Bhushan said. “I am looking forward to interpreting these observations and tying them with established laws of glacier physics. In the longer term, this project will provide a foundation for my intended career as a glaciologist specializing in remote sensing.”

Lauren Satterfield, environmental and forest sciences

Large plant-eating mammals, such as deer and elk, can reduce the amount of flammable brush in the forest as the animals eat and trample plants. These activities can help reduce burnable fuels on a landscape, impacting where a wildfire starts and how it grows. But researchers still don’t know what effects the predators of deer and elk — including wolves and cougars — might have on this natural cycle.

Satterfield will combine NASA data on forest canopies with GPS collar data from both predators and their prey to understand the role these animals play in regulating the amount of fuel and severity of wildfire in areas across Washington and the Pacific Northwest.

“This NASA project will allow me to take my Ph.D. work, which focuses on understanding predator-predator and predator-prey interactions, and apply it in an exciting new direction with potentially widespread implications for how we manage for fire in the future,” Satterfield said. “Long-term, I seek to use ecology and predictive modeling to address issues of global climate change in ecosystems heavily influenced by people.”

The fellowship used to be called the and was renamed in 2019. More information on this year’s selection process is available .

We now have a third, much more powerful tool. While he was a doctoral student in 91̽��’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences, devised new ways to use high-resolution satellite images to track elevation changes for massive ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. Over the years he wondered: Why aren’t we doing this for mountain glaciers in the United States, like the one visible from his department’s office window?

He has now made that a reality. In 2012, he first asked for satellite time to turn digital eyes on glaciers in the continental U.S., and he has since collected enough data to analyze mass loss for Mount Rainier and almost all the glaciers in the lower 48 states. He will present results from these efforts Oct. 22 at the in Seattle.

“I’m interested in the broad picture: What is the state of all of the glaciers, and how has that changed over the last 50 years? How has that changed over the last 10 years? And at this point, how are they changing every year?” said Shean, who is now a research associate with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

The maps provide a twice-yearly tally of roughly 1,200 mountain glaciers in the lower 48 states, down to a resolution of about 1 foot. Most of those glaciers are in Washington state, with others clustered in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, and in California’s Sierra Nevada.

To create the maps, a satellite camera roughly half the size of the Hubble Space Telescope must take two images of a glacier from slightly different angles. As the satellite passes overhead, moving at about 4.6 miles per second, it takes images a few minutes apart. Each pixel of the image covers 30 to 50 centimeters (about 1 foot) and a single image can be tens of miles across.

Shean’s technique uses automated software that matches millions of small features, such as rocks or crevasses, in the two images. It then uses the difference in perspective to create a 3-D model of the surface.

The first such map of a Mount St. Helens glacier was obtained in 2012, and the first for Mount Rainier in 2014. The project has grown steadily since then to include more glaciers every year.

The results confirm stake measurements at South Cascade Glacier in the North Cascades, showing significant loss over the past 60 years. Results at Mount Rainier also reflect the broader shrinking trends, with the lower-elevation glaciers being particularly hard hit. Shean estimates cumulative ice loss of about 0.7 cubic kilometers (900 million cubic yards) at Mount Rainier since 1970. Distributed evenly across all of Mount Rainier’s glaciers, that’s equivalent to removing a layer of ice about 25 feet (7 to 8 meters) thick.

“There are some big changes that have happened, as anyone who’s been hiking on Mount Rainier in the last 45 years can attest to,” Shean said. “For the first time we’re able to very precisely quantify exactly how much snow and ice has been lost.”

The glacier loss at Rainier is consistent with trends for glaciers across the U.S. and worldwide. Tracking the status of so many glaciers will allow scientists to further explore patterns in the changes over time, which will help pinpoint the causes — from changes in temperature and precipitation to slope angle and elevation.

“The next step is to integrate our observations with glacier and climate models and say: Based on what we know now, where are these systems headed?” Shean said.

Those predictions could be used to better manage water supplies and flood risks.

“We want to know what the glaciers are doing and how their mass is changing, but it’s important to remember that the meltwater is going somewhere. It ends up in rivers, it ends up in reservoirs, it ends up downstream in the ocean. So there are very real applications for water resource management,” Shean said. “If we know how much snow falls on Mount Rainier every winter, and when and how much ice melts every summer, that can inform water resource managers’ decisions.”

Shean will begin a faculty position this winter in the UW’s Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, where he will explore those questions further for the U.S. as well as for other regions, like high-mountain Asia, where over a billion people depend on glacier-fed rivers for irrigation, hydropower and drinking water.

Co-authors are at the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, Erin Whorton at the USGS Washington Water Science Center, Jon Riedel at the National Park Service’s��North Cascades National Park and Andrew Fountain at Portland State University. The work was funded by the National Park Service, the USGS and NASA.

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For more information, contact Shean at 206-221-8727 or dshean@uw.edu. Accompanying images also accessible on .