USGS remote pilot mounts a sensor to a UAS during the snow water equivalent (SWE) project in Winter Park Colorado

USGS researcher Joe Adams (NUSO) mounts a Ricoh GRII camera to a UAS that will be flying transects to collect natural color imagery during the snow water equivalent (SWE) project in Winter Park Colorado. After collecting 100s of overlapping natural color images they will be processed with structure from motion (SfM) software to generate 3D models of snow pack that provides very accurate elevation of the top of the snow for comparison to radar and lidar data. The generated natural color orthomosaic is also used to colorize the lidar point cloud.

NUSO scientists teamed with the USGS Water Resources Mission Area in a multi-year data collection effort to help develop and verify a process for generating snow depth measurements from UAS-collected LiDAR data from 2020 to 2022. This ability to calculate centimeter-level snow depth measurements from remotely sensed data also contributes to the USGS Next Generation Water Observing System (NGWOS) goal of remotely sensed mapping of snow conditions to better forecast snowmelt runoff in Colorado watersheds.