Avalanche

Wet snow avalanches, including both wet slab and glide avalanches, are dangerous and can be particularly difficult to predict because they are relatively poorly understood compared to dry snow avalanches. They pose significant risk to human life and infrastructure in mountainous areas throughout the world. Wet snow avalanches are caused by weakening in the strength of the snowpack, often triggered...

The USGS Snow and Avalanche Project (SNAP) uses remotely sensed technologies to understand snowpack changes that influence water storage, recreation, avalanche hazard and acts as a driver of landscape change. Satellites, uninhabited aerial systems (UAS), and structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry are some of the tools scientists use to collect high resolution imagery that supports ongoing snow...

Snow avalanches pose substantial risks to human safety, commerce, and infrastructure in mountainous regions across the globe. Avalanches also act as drivers of important ecological change by creating and modifying habitat for flora and fauna. To better understand the dynamic processes of avalanches at multiple scales, the USGS Snow and Avalanche project uses a variety of methods to study avalanche...

Glacier National Park (GNP) is considered a stronghold for a large diversity of plant and animal species and harbors some of the last remaining populations of threatened and endangered species such as grizzly bear and bull trout, as well as non threatened, yet ecologically important species such as bighorn sheep and black bear. The mountain ecosystems of GNP that support these species are dynamic...

Climate change is widely acknowledged to have a profound effect on the biosphere and cryosphere with many and diverse impacts on global resources. Mountain ecosystems in the western U.S., and the U.S. Northern Rocky Mountains in particular, are highly sensitive to climate change. Warming in western Montana is nearly 2 times greater than the rise in global temperatures over the last 100+ years...

As the most popular attraction in Glacier National Park (GNP), the Going-to-the-Sun Road traverses scenic alpine zones and crosses the Continental Divide at Logan Pass (2026m or 6,647' elevation). The Park closes a 56km (34.8 mile) section of the road each winter due to inclement weather, heavy snowfall, and avalanche hazards. Annual spring opening of the road is a highly anticipated event for...

Snow scientists with the USGS are unraveling specific weather, climate, and snowpack factors that contribute to large magnitude avalanches in an effort to understand these events as both a hazard and a landscape–level disturbance. The Snow and Avalanche Project (SNAP) advances our understanding of avalanche-climate interactions and wet snow avalanches, and improves public safety through innovative...