The airborne snow observatory during NASA snow experiment (SnowEx) year 1: Mapping of snow water equivalent and snow albedo and constraining understanding of the physical environment

We present Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO) measurements in support of the fist NASA SnowEx field campaign. The fall 2016 campaign collected snow-free data using multiple in-situ and remote sensing platforms at two distinctly different sites in western Colorado: Grand Mesa (flat, high, partially forested plateau), and Senator Beck Basin (steep, complex sub-alpine and alpine mountain terrain). The ASO flies a scanning lidar and imaging spectrometer to measure snow depth and albedo. For the SnowEx snow-free campaign, the ASO surveys produced high-resolution digital surface models of the underlying terrain with full-waveform laser returns. These data will be used to calculate snow depths during subsequent winter surveys, and provide insight to the impact of forest canopy structure on snow accumulation and melt.