Snowpack analysis

David Marchetti

Western State College of Colorado

This activity has been reviewed by 2 review processes (view details)

This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection

This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.
This activity has benefited from input from faculty educators beyond the author through a review and suggestion process. This review took place as a part of a faculty professional development workshop where groups of faculty reviewed each others' activities and offered feedback and ideas for improvements. To learn more about the process On the Cutting Edge uses for activity review, see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.

Initial Publication Date: April 30, 2008 | Reviewed: November 3, 2013 (see revision history: 2 events)

Summary

Measurement and analysis of snowpack density and SWE. Students collect field data on the snowpack, analyse and interpret the data, and present their results.

Climate/Paleoclimate | College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)

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Context

Audience

Undergraduate course in geomorphology and a water science course in environmental studies.

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

Determination of earth material properties - in this case snow (weighing, measuring, etc), observational skills (grain sizes, hardness), very basic math and dimensional anaysis

How the activity is situated in the course

as a stand alone exercise or lab activity

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

collecting field data through measurement and observation
and determining the water equivalent of the snowpack from that data

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

relating their collected data on the snowpack to an eventual spring-time water source of subsurface and overland flow

spatial extrapolation of their point data to the entire drainage basin

estimates of uncertainty in their data collection

Other skills goals for this activity

presentation of their snow stratigraphy using a computer graphing/drawing program

working in a group

Description of the activity/assignment

Students collect data on the winter snowpack and using their observations they determine the water equivalent of the pack. Students need to prepare and assemble equipment for winter fieldwork, collect meaningful field data, interpret their data, assess the uncertainty of their measurements, and evaluate the usefulness of extrapolating their point data to the entire watershed.
Designed for a geomorphology course
Uses geomorphology to solve problems in other fields