Monitoring of heterogeneous mountain snowpacks

The natural mountain snow cover is highly heterogeneous across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Snow cover properties show high variability from year to year, constant change throughout the season, strong horizontal and vertical gradients as well as a dependence on terrain properties and vegetation, making the measurement and modelling challenging. Conversely, the snowpack itself controls a variety of gravitational and hydrological processes as well as the formation and decay of long-term water reservoirs in summit regions. Detecting the snow cover’s spatial heterogeneity and main properties based on station measurements, subsequent interpolations and sub-grid parameterisations are still subject to large uncertainties. We welcome contributions on observations and modelling of the spatio-temporal variability of the mountain snow cover, its fundamental properties and its significance for environmental processes. Methods may include, but are not limited to: Remote Sensing, UAV-based observations, LiDAR measurements, Cosmic-Ray Neutron Sensing or high-resolution modelling.