[Dr. Benes] Hello everyone, thanks for coming today.
My name is Dr. Benes,
I'm an Assistant Director within the office
of the Vice President for Research here at UVM.
I work on projects related to the University's natural areas
and mountain environmental science,
and I've been starting to get more involved
in these various projects involving
regional snow and mountain weather observation networks.
Last year I was involved, hosted a working group session
similar to this one last year as well,
focused on forming regional networks
of mountain observatories in the Northeast.
I was really thankful for the opportunity
to have that working session last year,
and the following discussions that led
out of that working session.
Been hosting a monthly seminar series
for mountain observatories in the northeast
in which different partners across the region
have been giving presentations and sharing information
about the work that they do
for monitoring and research on mountains across the region.
And most recently have been collaborating with
the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center
on Whiteface Mountain, New York,
Paul Casson is here today representing that group
and the Mount Washington Observatory
to develop a new mountain observatory network
across the region, which I'll talk about more shortly.
I'm really also pleased to have Erika Rowland here today.
Erika is the Eastern Director at the Forest Stewards Guild.
The Forest Stewards Guild is a collaborator
on this new Northeast Snow Study Project
that I'm involved in.
And Erika has a bulk of experience in facilitating
conservation practitioners to build understanding
and begin planning for climate change.
And she lives on the Maine-New Hampshire border
in the foothills of the White Mountains,
so really appreciate her coming up today to Burlington
and being part of this working group session.
Erika, anything else you'd wanna share?
Okay, awesome.
Wanted to start off this working group session
just reflecting on FEMCs number one goal,
which is to contribute to the efficient coordination
of multidisciplinary environmental monitoring
and research activities.
And I believe that mountain weather observations,
as well as snow monitoring, is central to understanding
and better considering management and protection
of forest and ecosystems.
Everything from weather to snow
has interdisciplinary impacts across the region.
And I believe that there's a lot of different studies
and a lot of different collective understanding
that we can gather about our ecosystems
by better understanding weather and snow.
The Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative as well,
so I started off on the first slide here
with a photo of Mount Mansfield by the Spatial Analysis Lab.
On Mount Mansfield, the FEMC has been involved
in over 30-years of long-term ecosystem monitoring
and research on the mountain.
And so this is one image
of three different watersheds on the mountain.
The star is where the proposed
Mount Mansfield Science and Stewardship Center would be.
And all of the other dots are locations
of monitoring sites associated with the FEMC
and their long-term monitoring.
And so they've been really focusing on
this interdisciplinary monitoring
on and around the mountain.
They have two weather stations,
about 2,900-feet on each side of the mountain,
that they've been maintaining since the 1990s as well.
So lots of opportunity to leverage the long-term monitoring
that's in place thanks to the FEMC.
Also wanted to point out some of these
long alpine research priorities set by Capers et. al. 2013.
These 25-different researchers responded to a survey
about one-decade ago and ranked research priorities.
And today we're focusing on two of their
six research priorities.
Number one, focusing on snow cover and timing of snow melt.
And number five, characterizing variation in weather.
And again, I believe that these two elements
are also tied to understanding impacts of climate
and long-term monitoring,
which feed into all of the other priorities
that were established by these researchers.
I wanted to also point to this fairly new network
that has been established at the University of Vermont
called the Cold Weather Summit-to-Shore
Environmental Observation Network.
It is funded by the Cold Region's Research
and Engineering Laboratory or CRREL
And Dr. Arne Bomblies is the PI in the project.
And Dr. Beverly Wemple, who's with us today, is the co-PI.
And Anna Grunes is also a graduate student on the project
and she has a poster out in the poster hall.
So I encourage you all to visit her poster
and learn more about the
Cold Weather Summit-to-Shore Project
after this working session.
But there are 22-different weather stations
that run along a transect that spans from Lake Champlain
to the top of Mount Mansfield
and across into the northeast kingdom of Vermont.
And all of these different monitoring stations
have solar radiation sensors, snow depth sensors,
a meteorological platform that measures temperature,
relative humidity, wind speed and direction
and precipitation, snowpack temperature ladders,
a soil heat flux plate,
and soil and moisture temperature sensors
at five, 10 and 30-centimeters.
And four of these stations have,
which are indicated in blue here,
have Sommer aluminum snow scales
to measure snow water equivalent or SWE,
and a Sommer snowpack analyzer
that records important parameters of the snowpack
to support predictions about snow melting processes.
And most recently, this network will be integrated
into this new regional network
of mountain observatories with Mount Washington
and the Whiteface Mountain Observatory,
which I'll talk about more shortly.
But first I wanted to start discussions on
this really new exciting initiative called
the Northeast Snow Study.
And so the Northeast Snow Study is this new
federally-appropriated funding through
the US Department of Agriculture
Natural Resource Conservation Service, or NRCS,
to the University of New Hampshire,
University of Vermont, and the Schoodic Institute,
the Appalachian Mountain Club and Forest Stewards Guild
and the New York State Mesonet
are all sub awardees to this as well.
And the goal is to assess community needs
for designing a coordinated network
of automated snow and weather measurement stations
in the East,
similar to the Western SNOTEL Network in the West.
And for those of you that don't know much about
the NRCS networks,
there's two-predominant networks that the NRCS manages.
There's SNOTEL, which are all these blue stations
out in the West,
and there's also SCAN Network, which is
the Soil Climate Analysis Network
that extends throughout the entire country.
There's actually one SCAN site on Mount Mansfield,
and one of the Cold Weather Summit-to-Shore
Environmental Observation network sites
is co-located next to the SCAN site.
And SNOTEL stations,
there's over 900-sites in these Western states.
They're located in remote high elevation
mountain watersheds.
And the basic sites collect temperature, snow depth,
snow water equivalent and precipitation.
And then there's enhanced sites,
and they collect soil moisture and temperature
at various depths, soil radiation,
wind and relative humidity.
And data is collected and reported multiple times daily
with some sensors reporting hourly.
And just right next door to us,
there's the New York State Mesonet,
and there's 126-different standard network sites
that were all completed at 2018.
And out of these 126-sites, all of them also
measure meteorological parameters as well as snow depth.
And you could see where all of these sites are
by where you could test the temperature readings
across the entire state.
And then I did an overlay on this image
and I added these blue circles for the sites
that are also snow network sites.
And at these sites, all of these sites measure SWE
and they're predominantly located
in the high elevation areas across the state.
And so the objectives of NESS,
there's many different objectives,
but overall the ultimate goal is
design a model for a new NRCS network in the region
to comprehensively monitor snowpack, weather,
and hydrological variables across elevational gradients
and mountain ranges.
And today our discussion is also thinking about what else,
what other objectives may we be missing,
or should we be thinking about
when designing this plan and this feasibility study
for a regional snow monitoring network
here in the Northeast?
And so NESS is gonna be launched in three different phases.
The project just started in October,
and this is actually the first working group session
that we're having for NESS.
We're just starting to get started on a website
and other kind of outreach materials.
And so we're just starting Phase 1,
which is stakeholder engagement
and data analysis and synthesis.
In Phase 2, we're gonna be thinking about
the next step of partnership development
and on-the-ground site selection.
We're gonna be looking at various properties
across the region and thinking about
what it would take to be able to actually install
these snow monitoring sites across the region.
And then Phase 3 would be
development of a public report
detailing these priority sites,
supporting rationale, partnership agreements,
a data-sharing and dissemination plan,
and implementation plan.
And then we're gonna be handing it off
to NRCS for implementation.
And the idea is to be able to have
three-different plans almost to be able to submit to NRCS,
this low, medium, high of different types of networks
that can exist.
So we're really thinking about what are the must-haves,
what are the would-be-nice-to-haves
associated with these networks,
and what are the must-haves, would-be-nice-to-haves...
Erika, help me out.
Oh, must-haves, should-haves, and would-be-nice-to-haves
associated with the NESS
feasibility study development.
And so today we're gonna be
collecting feedback from all of you,
and thinking about the design of this NESS network.
And so we're gonna be focusing mainly on the objectives
of the network itself.
Are there other applications or uses
that we should be thinking about
in the main objectives of NESS?
Data types and products,
what monitoring variables should be included
at each monitoring station?
How frequently should data be collected?
How should they be shared?
Thinking about the distribution of sites,
and also the overall network design,
which we'll have together in one breakout,
because I believe that the overall network design
and the distribution of sites go hand-in-hand.
And then after we discuss NESS,
I'll provide a little bit more of an overview
about this new Mountain Observatory Network
that has recently been funded.
And we'll collectively think about how
this new Mountain Observatory Network,
in collaboration with Mount Washington
and the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center
all integrates and complements the future vision
of what NESS could become here in the Northeast.
So with that, I'll hand it off to Erika
who's gonna help us facilitate these working sessions.
[Erika] Yeah, so hopefully when you all
decided to come to a working session,
it was with the intent of contributing.
As Josh noted, we're in the very preliminary stages.
The Forest Stewards Guild is working with
the Appalachian Mountain Club
to basically oversee the stakeholder engagement part.
And for the stakeholder engagement piece,
we're really asking a broad spectrum
of potential interest holders in the information
that could be generated with this,
their thoughts about this network.
And I'll just mention one thing,
we're gonna engage you and ask you these questions
and capture this and the work that we'll do today.
We'd also really appreciate it
if you'd sign this signup sheet on the way out,
particularly if you're interested in continued engagement.
Because again, this is just the preliminary step
that we'll be asking your input on.
So we're gonna be doing this exercise called 1-2-4-All.
And basically what this is is
we're gonna hand out these pieces of sticky note paper
that are color-coded to the different topics
that we wanna address today.
And we're gonna ask you to just take a minute,
literally a minute,
and just reflect by yourselves, individually,
on the questions, the prompts that we'll have.
Then we'll ask you to pair up with one other person
and start a conversation for a couple of minutes.
Then before we even get started,
I'm gonna break you into probably I think
either two or three-groups.
So after you've had two-minutes just chatting
with one other individual,
then we'll get together as a group
and summarize your ideas, and then we'll share out.
We'll ask you for the top two,
whatever the process might be.
And we'll collect the sticky notes at the end.
So we'll actually be capturing everybody's input into this
according to these different color-coordinated pads.
And then do a summary before we wrap things up today.
So I know it seems like a lot of instructions,
I think we'll go through it once,
and then everybody will get the hang of it.
And Josh, have you done a quick count?
Four, five, four,
maybe we'll break you into two-groups of four over there.
That group of four, would you mind joining this group,
'cause then there'll be six.
Even numbers are good when you have
to break out for practice.
And I'll move my bag over there if you'd like.
So again, we're gonna start out with,
I'm gonna move on to the next, I'll hand out,
and does everybody have a pen, anybody need a pen?
Anybody else need a pen?
[Participant] Can you just say
the journey just one more time?
I was looking at the handout.
[Erika] Yeah, sure.
So let's do these guys right, here this four.
[Participant] I'm thinking the two of us
should be in a different group.
[Erika] Okay.
[Participant] I think the two of us should be different.
[Erika] 'Cause again, you need a pen?
Anybody else need a pen?
[Participant] Can I get a pen?
[Dr. Benes] Yeah, and for our online attendees
you're also gonna break out into a subgroup.
Unfortunately Sarah Nelson with the MC
was originally gonna help us
with facilitation of the online group,
but she wasn't able to join us today.
So we would really appreciate,
we'll just put you on mute here on our end
and then unmute you afterwards,
and you're welcome to discuss between one another
about the prompts that we have for all of you.
So I'm just gonna put the volume down here.
[Erika] So again, for this first motive,
are you gonna advance to the objective?
[Dr. Benes] Yes.
[Erika] And I'll hand out some paper.
[Dr. Benes] So we're gonna be collecting input
on all of these various items.
So the first is going to be network objectives,
which is light green,
so we do have these light green Post-its
that you'll be putting ideas of network objectives on.
And so what we mean about network objectives
for NESS were,
we just handed out a one-pager about NESS,
the scope of NESS and what we're thinking about
for the focus areas of the Northeast Snow Study Network.
But various existing objectives
that we're considering right now
is focusing the design of this network
on spring flooding, potential for drought,
winter-based economy impact,
data for recreationalists,
climate monitoring and ecological change.
So we'd appreciate you reflecting
and thinking about other objectives
that we should be considering for NESS
that we should be thinking about
as we're developing a plan for
what this snow monitoring network
would look like across the region.
[Erika] Yeah.
And if the use of the word objectives isn't clear,
it's actually, what would we use this data for?
What would the applications be?
So it's really trying to add on to this list
that are already just the preliminary starter to this.
I don't know what kind of interest holders
in this topic you all represent.
But the one thing I didn't say is
we've already started some phone surveys around this,
again tackling from recreationalists to town planners
to everybody.
So we're trying to get a really broad swab of input
on what these applications or uses, objectives, may be.
We'll give you one-minute to think on your own
and then be prepared to pair up
and chat with your neighbor about this.
[Dr. Benes] You got the timer?
-[Erika] Yeah. -[Dr. Benes] Okay, great.
[Erika] Just as you think about this,
these are broad,
even these first four-bullets are kind of broad.
If you wanna dig into those in a little bit more detail,
that's helpful too.
(participant sighs)
And I don't know if that's been enough time
to do some thinking on your own,
but if you wanna start chitchatting to a partner,
that'd be awesome about ideas.
(participants chattering)
(participants chattering continues)
So my idea for the sticky notes,
to make it fun and more lively.
(participants chattering continues)
[Dr. Benes] And so go ahead and transition
to groups of four and share ideas amongst one another.
(participants chattering)
(participants chattering continues)
[Erika] If you could start to summarize,
and make sure you have it legible.
Another minute or two.
(participants chattering continues)
Okay, everybody, you ready to share a little bit?
I think group one's all ready to go first.
[Participant] We can go first.
[Erika] Okay, great, thank you.
[Participant] I'm gonna summarize what I've written.
[Erika] Okay, yeah, great.
[Dr. Benes] Wonderful.
[Participant] I would say there was an interest
in components that are beyond the hydrology
like the use of the data for just looking at plant vibration
and non-hydrology aspects.
[Erika] So, applying the data to these other questions?
-[Participant] Yeah. -[Erika] Okay.
And may I just interject?
Are there any data then, any specific parameters
that you would want collected
to make those applications viable?
[Participant] I think I brought up the aspect of
using the data for having a better understanding
of how much snowpack
contributes to flooding another human base,
the impacts to human society
or whatever, so that was I think another aspect
of just like sort of social...
[Erika] The social component, yeah.
[Participant] Component on that.
[Participant] Yeah, I just mentioned the impact of
up-slope migration for plants and animals,
so ecological impacts and influences of the snowpack.
[Erika] Yeah.
[Participant] I guess the third thing we were talking...
I'm sorry, were you gonna say something?
[Participant] No.
[Participant] The other thing that we did mention is
maybe looking at, one of us was thinking
this is realtime data,
and others were not thinking as realtime data.
So maybe thinking about how that data is packaged,
is it realtime or is it summarized,
or do you have different audiences
that wanna see different...
[Erika] And that is our next prompt.
[Participant] Sorry.
[Erica] Any more from this group?
Thank you very much.
I guess we'll just move to you guys for impressions.
[Participant] That was a lot of our conversation,
I think was the realtime verse packets type of situation.
We talked about maybe removing
recreationalists as a focus,
and adding that if we can collect a few more metrics
to appease that community from that approach.
Sounded like that was an opinion.
And being sure to establish new sites
on top of existing sites
or have corrallel data.
[Participant] And to have the location be where
it's gonna be meaningful for the purpose of those things.
So if is the top of Mount Washington
and the top of Mount Mansfield
really the data that has meaning in the valleys.
[Erika] Yeah, and again you'll be able to dig into that
when we get to these network design pieces.
So great, thinking ahead.
Do you guys have some ideas that you can share?
[Participant] I have some that we came up with.
So one thing based on the Mesonet,
New York State Mesonet,
agriculture is a big user of
specifically soil temperature,
but the whole concept of poor man's fertilizer,
snowpack contributing nitrogen in the spring.
Utilities, we had a lot of power outages
with this wet snowpack recently,
that affects everybody basically.
I kind of agree, I think rec relations is important,
but it shouldn't be limited to that,
this has a much wider reach
and you can even dig deeper into the recreationalists
with the avalanche forecasting, snow quality forecasting
for our skiing, like qualifying the snowpack
and not just the depth of the snow,
but what type of snow it is, and SWE plays into that.
Flooding of course was the major one,
and baseline climate data,
do we know if we have snow now that
that there is less snow now than there used to be,
year-to-year.
A lot of people's opinions on that
are based on their recollections as a child,
nothing that's really empirical data.
[Erika] Great.
So can I just collect all of these,
the ones from this exercise?
And as I do that, do you wanna move on?
[Dr. Benes] Yeah, sounds good.
[Participant] Would frazzelized or anchorized,
would that be in your realm
or is that too hydrological for your focus?
[Erika] I don't think
it's too hydrological for our purpose,
but it's really, we've been talking to the
northeast forecast, the Berkeley Forecast Center.
We're really asking broadly.
[Participant] Because ice in general
is a big concern in the state,
but from a Fisheries perspective,
we're really concerned about that kind of life.
In-stream ice features basically that can disrupt.
We also missed the transportation sector.
[Erika] Yeah, you already plugged your note.
You got that down?
[Participant] Yeah, we'll do that.
The other one with chemistry is the pollution-type stuff,
el fico, and it's general chemistry,
especially talking about acid rain.
Just very concerned here
about the state of general
water chemistry.
I don't know whether snow is different.
[Erika] Yeah, in terms of what is
being sent up in the atmosphere.
[Dr. Benes] The initial question was just
in terms of interest groups.
[Erika] Well interest groups,
or what kind of uses, who might be using the data,
what might they be applying it to, those kinds of things.
So again, this gets back to the idea of the objectives
for the entire network.
[Participant] I mean you were the only one who suggested
iodine.
[Participant] Yeah.
[Dr. Benes] Great, well we'll transition now
to data types and products,
which will be the teal-colored Post-its.
And here we wanna think a little bit more about
what different data types and products should be considered.
What things are being measured by these stations,
what other types of variables should we be thinking about.
Realtime data availability also being part of this as well.
How would people access the data, other things like that.
So we'll do the same exact exercise
where we'll spend one-minute with individual reflection.
Then we'll do the same process again with groups of two.
And then we'll move to groups of four,
and then reflect on what everyone has come up with.
And to our online attendee,
I'm sorry I had you muted but you're welcome to participate.
So I'm just gonna unmute the sound system now.
Please mute yourself if you're
just thinking to yourself,
but unmute yourself if you wanna chime in.
[Participant] Is that second to last one
supposed to say soil temperature and moisture?
[Dr. Benes] Soil temperature and moisture, yes.
[Participant] Snow cover would be built into depth.
[Dr. Benes] Snow cover would be built into depth, yeah.
[Erika] Okay, if you guys wanna transition into
just talking in pairs again, please, any ideas that way.
(participants chattering)
(participants chattering continues)
[Erika] The room is quiet, maybe everybody's all set.
[Participant] We're getting a grade on this right now.
[Erika] I'm not grading anything.
So since we started doing this stuff,
do you guys mind leading off this time?
[Participant] You don't wanna take the rein?
[Participant] I don't think I can recap everything
that everyone else's was saying,
but the one that I came up with was
really just making sure that it's shared
really broadly with the public as a
tool to educate on climate change.
Because we know that it's impacting the winter so much.
And sharing it with the public,
in terms of the public can just readily digest,
instead of having to tell them what
snow water looked like and means,
but just things in that terminology.
[Erika] Maybe, just out of curiosity,
because these are the kind of details that we're
dig into as we move forward.
What format, is that pictures?
[Participant] A website.
[Erika] Like an icon?
[Participant] Yeah.
They don't even have to read text.
[Erika] Something they may send via social media,
or something that...
[Participant] If you want to get to those people.
[Participant] Maybe a simple summary.
One thing I came up with was
precipitational tensity,
change in wind direction,
and change in delta T between two and nine-meters,
the disparity between those two.
Because you're getting an idea of frontal passage
and where the snow might be scoured or deposited,
but the quality of your data
is gonna is affected by wind,
but not just the speed of the wind,
but the direction and how quickly that's changing.
And it depends on your interval
that you're recording the data.
If it's hourly, it could change an awful lot in an hour.
And siting criteria, I don't know if that fits in to here
-but... -[Erika] The next part.
[Participant] That's overriding.
[Erika] Any other comments from this group?
[Participant] Would it be appropriate to have a camera?
[Participant] Good point.
[Participant] That's the most viewed part of the Mesonet
is the camera on every site.
[Dr. Benes] Patrick, what are you thinking about?
[Patrick] I thinking of the fish
in terms of all that water,
so ground water depth and temperature.
I think in Vermont in general
we need more of that information.
And then doing more on temperature.
I realize it's outside of this realm of snow,
but, hey, I'll just make a point for it.
[Erika] Somebody I was talking to
in some of these preliminaries,
preliminary research with somebody, and they're like,
"Everything goes down now,
"everything ends up in the stream anyway."
I'm gonna go with this group next.
[Participant] I'm gonna let you go,
because we had the thought and feel of what they just said,
one of the ideas.
[Participant] Yeah.
Well, we also had the idea of a camera,
and using that even potentially as
another way of driving snow depth,
having two different measurements of the same thing,
with the recent uncertainty there.
And then also maybe,
and this might just be some sort of post-processing thing,
but some sort of data for type of precipitation fall out,
sensor fluff, and it probably just means
a function of temperature,
but it doesn't always happen that way.
And then also talking about
the ability of data
to be accessed by the public.
This will definitely pre-select the quantity of data,
but allowing that to be easily digested
by people and the public, but also
for people who are using it for research purposes.
[Erika] So, again, I'm gonna probe this a little further,
because these are important questions I think to ask is
raw data packaged in some way
that's more accessible to the public,
but if you can, and I don't mean to put you on the spot,
make a distinction.
I think scientists would probably like the raw data
rather than the packaged.
But if you were putting on your public hat,
what would you like to see in terms of
if you went to the website,
and were looking for, what kind of data,
the raw data or some kind of summary?
-[Participant] As the public? -[Erika] Yeah.
[Participant] Yeah, I think definitely both,
but I think for general public, realtime data
and over, I don't know,
a 24-hour or maybe a week-long period
to be able to be able to see the evolution of
different variables.
So not necessarily processed, but just
being able to see changes in temperature
and wind speed, and changes in snow depth.
[Erika] Yeah, welcome, anybody come in.
[Participant] I think there's different audiences,
so I don't think you can think about
one data product output,
and even the raw data, people do like the raw data.
But I was saying I think this could produce a lot of data,
and one of the issues I think is for people
to easily have a way to subset what they want,
and not get overwhelmed with all the data that's there,
'cause it's just too much to deal with.
[Participant] So I said different audiences
might want different granularity and scale.
So you have raw data,
but I think there's derived products
that could be very useful to people.
The public, it's interesting,
I have a different perspective with the public.
I would love to see long-term trends
of this data over a year or two,
but you're answering it really differently,
you're like, "I wanna see the last day".
That's I think an example of how,
I don't think there's one up,
but definitely having a way to subset
and bring it down to scale for different audiences.
[Erika] And I think it's been a great point to capture,
Josh, as we go into more in-depth discussion
that this is gonna be a real nuanced piece of
what we feel it is.
[Participant] I would just say that FEMC
might be a good model for you in that,
because FEMC has invested in
core environmental data collection.
And then when Jim Duncan was head of FEMC,
I think the big contribution that he made
was dashboard development that became this
how do you take the core data
and get it displayed and accessible
to a whole range of users,
from the manager to the researcher
to the, you name it, the public, that sort of thing.
So you might wanna think of,
and even interview Jim like from that.
[Erika] Yeah, and I think this conversation
will help shape some of our questions
and some of the working groups
that we have going forward to get comment.
[Participant] Yeah, I mean I was just thinking
in terms of as a member of the public
and mostly as a recreationalists to the public,
is the two online data sources
that have to do with Stoneback
that I use a ton and really love the way it's presented.
It's different but I wanna shout CA,
it's a really great job in the region.
It's a really wonderful job in what you were talking about
in terms of having a very digestive report
for a very particular use.
I'm not saying it's for avalanches,
but whatever that particular public interest is,
they have a really good way of displaying
and showing the most key information
that you need,
and then having a much more detailed
report within that.
That's very much based upon region,
and that also involves a lot of community science,
and that website as well that you can contribute.
So that is I think like a really great resource
or a great way of displaying...
[Erika] Thinking of a model or for data.
[Participant] Yeah, and they also have an app
that is actually usable and really nice.
And then for long-term snowpack data,
I was saying that there's somebody who has a website
for snow depth on Mount Mansfield,
it's called Matt Parrilla.
And that's look at it all the time to be like,
how is this year in relationship to every other year?
So those are really well displayed.
[Erika] Great.
Are there any other comments from this group?
[Participant] Yeah, a few others,
most of it's covered already,
but realtime data collection
perhaps updated online every 15-minutes as well.
Got that written down.
For me, I like to graph and I'm more short-term days
looking back, or thinking about public.
If I was with science hat on then
I'm gonna want multiple years.
But public, couple of days.
And co-locate again, this is the same answer
in the previous question with co-locate this
with other sites so that way you're not duplicating,
you have one site a mile away,
and then you've got everyone's collecting weather data.
Put them side by side and utilize each other's data.
And then they would also be measuring,
your co-located site would be measuring the chemistry,
the snow chemistry, or rain chemistry.
Towards the solar radiation,
make sure that long wave radiation's included in that.
And are assuming pressure means atmospheric pressure?
[Dr. Benes] Yes.
[Participant] I was not assuming that
and I asked why we would need to measure pressure.
Oh, of course.
[Participant] Very much pressure.
[Participant] Clarity and word choice.
[Participant] And when you guys mentioned co-location
and chemistry, that NADP sites make sense to me
'cause there's already a lot of 'em.
[Dr. Benes] Absolutely.
[Participant] And they're doing that.
And one thing with the camera that I forgot to mention
that I learned that's a really cool trick.
So wind sensors, especially at high elevation
are really susceptible to icing,
and you get a lot of times where they're not any good.
But if you have a camera on a snow stake,
you put a feather or a piece of flagging on the top,
it gives you a visual representation
of which way the wind's blowing.
So you can say, gee that thing's raw, it's not working now.
But gives you a way of knowing
if the wind sensor's actually accurate or not.
When you just see a number, you just go by that,
it may may not be right.
And it's free or nearly free.
It's little tech.
[Erika] Any other comments?
Can I collect your sticky notes,
and I'll pass out the next one.
[Participant] Looks like Julia may be contributing.
[Dr. Benes] Oh, is there somebody online
that wants to chime in?
Anyone online that wants to chime in?
-[Julia] Hi, it's just Julia. -[Dr. Benes] Hi, Julia.
[Julia] Hey, how's it going?
I jumped in kind of late, sorry,
I was going between sessions.
But I just also, the USGS, the National Water Dashboard,
similarly has like a lot of stations
with variable parameters at different stations
and you can show the data at different timescales.
Not that this has to replicate it,
but it would be another place to look.
[Dr. Benes] Fantastic, got that idea down, thank you.
So we'll transition now to two different categories,
and if other ideas come up
as we are starting to talk about these other categories,
don't hesitate to jump up here
and grab one of the other color notepads,
and throw on ideas on the walls around here.
But the next topic area that we wanted to discuss
was the distribution of sites.
So I threw on a map here just examples,
and I put the New York State snow monitoring sites
just as static images on this slide,
because they're already set there.
But in terms of this NESS feasibility study,
and thinking about the distribution of sites across Vermont,
New Hampshire and Maine, would we be thinking about
regional distribution, distribution of these sites
really focused on high elevation areas,
or focused more on elevational gradients across the region?
So there's different ways
that these stations could be distributed.
Would love any of your ideas on
the distribution of the sites.
And then also, so that's gonna be the yellow ones,
but then we're also gonna have orange
during this breakout as well
focused on the overall network design of NESS,
what are the must-haves, should-haves
and would-be-nice-to-haves,
and what should we be thinking about in terms
of network design?
So these two going hand-in-hand,
because I think overall network design
feeds into the distribution of these sites.
[Erika] And actually,
I only gave you one yellow color piece of paper
so you can put them all, both on one.
Don't get confused.
[Participant] Can you explain that one more,
because I honestly have no idea what you're looking for?
-[Dr. Benes] In terms of... -[Participant] It's different
than what was on the other one?
[Dr. Benes] Yeah, I guess, Erika,
feel free to chime in too,
but I'm thinking in terms of
what are the overall main take-home things
that these sites would be measuring,
not just measuring, but overall
necessities for this network.
What are the main take-home messages?
I don't know if you have examples.
[Erika] I've been thinking about this,
it's given all the things we've talked about,
we've talked about objectives,
we talked about data products,
we're gonna be talking about sites,
what are the priorities there?
If you had to design your network
for just the things that we must have,
where would the sites be, what would the data products be?
What would the objectives be?
Or if you could expand it out more, for example,
if we can only measure snow water equivalent
at the tops of mountains,
that would be one kind of overall network design.
But we're trying to think something bigger and better.
And the reason this is important is that,
as Josh talked about in his opening remarks,
when the report goes back to the NRCS,
it's gonna be like,
"Well here's our bare-bones design", and then,
"Here's what it would be if we could have
these next things," the should-haves.
And wouldn't it be nice if it could cover
the entire elevational gradient on every mountain,
on every aspect, kind of thing.
It's to that point.
[Participant] Have you looked at all at SNOTEL network
out west and compared?
[Dr. Benes] That's what we're gonna be looking into more.
[Erika] The leadership group is taking a field trip
out to Utah in January.
To take a look at those, yeah, and to ask
some of these more technical questions.
[Participant] So you're talking about siting,
or are you talking about...
[Erika] Let's go back, let's make this easy,
let's go back to the previous slide,
and just work on site locations.
If you were gonna distribute these sites,
where would they be, only high elevations, spread out,
valleys, elevational gradients?
From your perspective,
what would be important to capture.
And again, let's start with a minute,
we can just go from a minute of reflection
and then we'll just jump into group,
especially since we've lost some folks here.
Feel free to start talking as groups now.
(participants chattering)
(participants chattering continues)
Wrapping up this piece.
Can I hear a little bit of what folks thought.
We'll start with you guys.
[Participant] I have a big list.
(all laugh)
But I've been talking to Josh about this for a while.
So a number of us like to hear the whole discussion,
I've been talking about leveraging existing sites,
like the SCAN sites seem like almost a no-brainer,
because they're already set up for climate analysis.
Piggybacking on top of that network, maybe the CoCoRaHS,
which is like a lay monitoring network to look into that,
where those are across the region,
research sites like in New Hampshire, Hubbard Brook,
Mount Washington, obviously, the Whiteface network,
Sleepers River, but also considering university properties
because of the potential that it might offer
for student engagement research.
So that's a big overall, don't build a network, it's...
[Participant] Reinventing the wheel!
[Participant] Let's build it off of what already exists.
I don't know that anyone else in our group said this,
but we have been grappling a lot with this
in our Summit-to-Shore project.
We put a lot of our monitoring sites under the forest,
the forest canopy, because we're trying to get them
sited along an elevation gradient.
It's completely forested setting mostly,
but Met sites are typically sited in openings,
and I think you all should watch for that
when you go...
[Erika] That's a good point that I hadn't thought about.
I'm sure other people in our team have thought of that,
which is that differentiation.
[Participant] Generally if you're gonna
buy all that equipment
that you had on your list, Josh, be careful,
because that needs to be sited in an opening.
But there is this what actually gets caught on the ground
and contributes to the hydrology and habitat
and all these things is important.
So sometimes like not considering at least,
or asking, let's not tell people.
You did not have on your list,
but I think it's super important to consider,
and Peter Groffman made this point, staffing.
I would design your network with staffing
as your number one priority,
because you collect all this data,
and you don't have the staff
to go collect the data from the field,
deal with the equipment, make sure you curate the data,
get it up, it's not reflective
if you don't have the staff.
And it's hard to get funding for staff,
but without the staff everything else caves in.
So I would put staffing up.
Related to that I think there are some
really great opportunities today to use community science,
super simple measurements
distributed like post in the ground
that you could ask people when they're skiing past
or recreating past, take a picture
and send it to this website we set up.
So a much more distributed network of simple snow dat,
that would be community based
with a scale back network of what we know in the last week
until, could work.
This is kind of related to your network design,
but just to think about there's a whole science behind
optimal sensor placement representativeness,
and the scale at which sensors of any kind express.
So try to engage someone who's an expert on that,
and thinking about that, maybe even using some of the data
that we have in the northeast to ask that question.
That's kind of my high list.
Was there anything I didn't pick up?
[Participant] Yes, where the sites,
transect versus summit versus regional folk.
[Participant] Yeah, we grappled with that
with the Summit-to-Shore Project too,
because we knew that elevation was a key control,
so we wanted to capture that elevation.
We also wanted it regionally across the state.
So we opted for this across the state
at kind of a broad scale and then very intensive
on the elevation region.
[Participant] And one of the thoughts on that was
it goes back to the first question,
depends on what you're trying to do.
If you want it to be relevant to the public and the people,
then it can't all be on the top of a mountain,
'cause gotta be where they are,
or what they're wanting to do is.
[Participant] Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
[Erika] I was gonna say to your point
about these other existing networks,
one of the other aspects of this early
interest holder engagement piece is
that we're doing a data scan.
So trying to reach out to as many folks
who have either formal, informal,
automated, manual, just networks to understand this.
That's one of our codes.
You guys have things to add?
[Participant] I can speak.
I think, well Beverly pretty much exhausted
(interference on audio)
But, yeah, generally optimizing to target the heterogeneity
of all of the different factors that you could.
And we were saying,
obviously you want the most data possible,
so ideally we'd have a Met station
every couple of hundred feet, but that's not realistic.
But really trying to have as much replication
and also variability captured.
And replication component for comparing training
and testing data too is really valuable.
So not just having one set measurement
on the top of Mount Mansfield,
but ideally having further measurement
maybe on top of Camel's Hump as well,
or on the top of Jay Peak.
[Erika] Has everybody written these things in their notes?
Because you guys are our notetakers,
so I'm hoping that you've captured
as much of this as possible in your notes.
[Dr. Benes] And I'm also writing down
some things that are being told narratively here too.
But appreciate you writing it all down as well,
so we make sure we capture it.
[Participant] And I was thinking,
obviously I think there's people who have sited networks
other than me that know more,
but if there's not a given protocol,
I guess one of the opportunities here
would be to, you could have a regional network
and some gradients, elevational gradients,
and some very dense clusters,
and you could really look at,
you get a lot more data if you cluster.
Use that as a comparison to...
[Erika] Yeah, that's a really interesting...
[Participant] Where you're siting them,
and if you were gonna do it again,
would you wanna add more clusters,
or would you wanna add more gradients?
So that's another big thing to think about.
That could be a completely...
[Erika] It was learning component,
because thinking about that second question
that Josh was asking about must-haves,
should-haves, wouldn't-it-be-great-to-have,
it might be that initial chunk of funding comes in
and then the network maybe 10-years later.
But if you had almost like a study design
and the way you sited, you could figure out how to
maybe take advantage of that when you're building out.
[Participant] How you organize, how you built it out.
[Erika] Yeah.
Anything else from this group?
[Participant] Watersheds, make sure you have a site
in each major watershed of the state and a slope aspect.
So the north to south nature, the Green Mountains,
there's a huge difference between the east and west side,
obviously.
[Erika] That also gets you guys in your microclimates too,
thinking about that in the aspect.
[Participant] Yeah, a lot of what we have,
like Beverly mentioned siting,
for NADP there's a
45-degree rule.
If you're looking up at the site with a clinometer
that there's no tree, no obstruction, they want 30-degrees,
but they'll accept 45.
So it's really hard, especially in the Adirondack Park,
you can't just go cutting trees.
So that's why a lot of sites end up in agricultural areas.
There's not a lot of natural openings.
So there's limitations there.
Proximity to population centers.
So a point was brought up about,
this isn't just for skiers,
I know there's more snowpack in the mountains,
but there's not no snowpack at lower elevations.
And I would definitely reiterate what was said
about talking to people in existing networks
and what works for them and what does not work for them.
And maybe not going out and buying all your sensors
for all sites at first.
Maybe build one site and try it for a while as a pilot,
and see what works and what doesn't.
[Erika] Anything else from this group?
Well before we transition to Josh's last piece,
I wanna thank you all so much for your input here,
because a lot of these preliminary discussions we have
are really gonna help inform the more in-depth conversations
and workshops that we're gonna have,
they'll touch on more of these things.
But this is definitely given us ideas
on how to structure those conversations.
Also, if you'd like to be involved going forward,
what I've been telling people
that I've been interviewing on the phone
is these are very preliminary,
probably towards the end of January, beginning of February
when the folks and leadership team gets back
from doing their SNOTEL visits,
we'll have a virtual meeting to dig in a little bit deeper,
which will be followed by an in-person meeting
at one of the AMC facilities in March or April
where we'll really tackle these in-depth,
and be starting to make some preliminary decisions.
Well, we'd love to have you sign this up,
but in particular if you wanna be involved going forward,
if you could indicate that,
and we'll be sure to get you information by email.
[Dr. Benes] And these QR codes and URLs
are also on the backside of the one-pagers
that I handed out about NESS to all of you.
So if you wanna return to the survey at a later time,
or both surveys, I'd really appreciate it.
[Erika] It's okay, I won't interrupt.
[Dr. Benes] So as we're closing out,
the last piece to this working group session is
discussing this mountain of observatory network.
As I mentioned last year for this working group session,
we had this discussion about forming a regional network
of mountain observatories here in the northeast.
And we've been continuing to have a monthly seminar series
and we have a lot of participating partners already
across the region with monitoring infrastructure
on a lot of different mountain peaks
and high elevation areas across the region.
And so we're starting to consider ways to collaborate,
work together on a whole host
of interdisciplinary research areas.
And one exciting new development is that
I have collaborated with Dr. Arne Bomblies,
who's the PI on the Summit-to-Shore Project here
that has all of these monitoring stations
from Lake Champlain to Sleepers River Research Watershed
in the northeast kingdom,
and the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center
on Whiteface Mountain in New York,
and New York State Mesonet,
and the Mount Washington Mesonet,
Mount Washington Observatory Mesonet.
And so we collectively wrote a grant
to the Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Network
to develop a shared web platform for our collective data
of weather monitoring stations that we already had in place
across the region,
and recently learned that it was funded.
We're gonna be starting work on this project very soon.
And the overall goal is be able to
standardize data management
between our different mountain observatories,
engage area stakeholders across the region
to think about how our weather monitoring stations
can best benefit stakeholders across the region,
and identify how our monitoring stations can best connect
into national and
international climate monitoring objectives
in high elevation environments.
And also to develop this shared web portal for
our various pieces of our data
that would be available in live-time on the web.
And so...
[Participant] Go back to that slide.
How many of these sites exist now?
[Dr. Benes] So there's 22 Summit-to-Shore sites,
Mount Washington has 24, I believe.
I would have to double check
with the Mount Washington Observatory,
but they recently received a grant
to be able to add even additional ones
on mounted peaks across the whites,
which will be integrated in this network.
And Whiteface has three, correct, Paul?
[Paul] Yes.
[Participant] So these all exist?
[Dr. Benes] These all exist.
[Participant] All these all exist, okay.
[Dr. Benes] So we're taking monitoring stations
that all exist and we're putting 'em together
on a shared web platform,
and developing ideas and ways to be able to better
standardize our monitoring practices across the region
and be able to have a shared web portal
for certain pieces of our data that we're producing.
And when we're thinking about this in relation to NESS,
one of the things that I've been at least thinking about is
we're starting with this subset
of mountain observatories, this is Hubbard Brook over here,
so Hubbard Brook wasn't included in this EPA grant,
but maybe someday Hubbard Brook and maybe Cadillac Mountain
and other mountains would be potentially
included in the network.
Hopefully this is the first stage
of a Mountain Observatory Network in the region.
But one of the things that I wanted to gauge all of you on
is how would this Mountain Observatory Network
maybe complement NESS?
And maybe one idea is have a Hub and Spoke model of sorts
where there's more intensive monitoring
on mountains across the region
that complements a more regional approach
that may be generated through NESS.
And so we have ideas that can be written down,
the last few minutes here,
we can also just generally have a group discussion
about these ideas as well.
But if you have ideas that you wanna draw down,
I really appreciate it as well.
I can hand out the pink Post-its around,
but would appreciate any ideas that all of you have about
what monitoring components should be championed,
particularly with the Mountain Observatory Network,
and how would a Mountain Observatory Network
complement NESS?
And are there certain objectives or things
that we should be thinking about in terms of
overlap or duplication, and how do we avoid that?
So maybe meet in your groups of four for just a few minutes
and then we'll reflect with a larger group.
[Participant] Can you switch back to the questions?
[Dr. Benes] Yeah.
(participants chattering)
Okay, so maybe we can just transition to
sharing ideas as a large group,
and just have a dialogue in last few minutes here.
So general ideas or thoughts
that people have in response to these prompts?
Beverly?
[Beverly] I have one.
I'm just reflecting on the monthly meetings
that you've generated,
which I have been really impressed at
how many people have shown up at them.
And my sense is that they've been a blend of,
I can't think of a good term to put on this,
so I'll use examples, like stakeholders Ram, AMC,
and the Whiteface Network and so on.
So the actors that have made this monitoring happen,
and then you've had a few scientists drop in
and give presentations, Peter Groffman,
Jennifer Jacobs and so on.
You might think about moving towards developing
a community of practice around the field technicians,
the people that are going out and getting the data.
So I'm thinking about the Ben Porters
and whoever is the people who are constantly maintaining,
I'm thinking about the guy we met with
over in the New York Network.
[Erika] Scott?
[Beverly] Yeah, so a community practice
that would be targeted at certain kinds of players,
and those technicians are really key
and having them learn from each other.
And then the data curators,
they're a separate group, and sometimes maybe they overlap,
but they'd learn.
And then possibly even a community of graduate students
that are all working on snow-related projects
and try to encourage those.
We had a great conversation today at lunchtime
with a graduate student here at EDM studying forest and snow
and Anna who's studying snow and meteorology,
and there's graduate students over in New York,
and I'm sure in New Hampshire and Maine,
trying to cultivate those, relationship building
among those individuals too.
[Dr. Benes] Great idea.
Any other thoughts, feedback, ideas, Anna?
[Anna] Yeah, going off of that with the graduate students,
developing some sort of snow monitoring lab
that I guess
could work across all institutions
that are involved with this would be really cool.
Or maybe specific to one or the other
that sometimes works together.
But, yeah, I think collaboration across research
is really important, I think.
[Participant] Or here's another,
maybe a different way of thinking about that,
is if you're gonna do the summer meeting
I think we're gonna do,
to bring groups together and think about this
building into that graduate student component
where they would have an opportunity to share their research
with each other, and to
the environmental monitoring professionals.
But certainly participating in the network with each other
and helping 'em, some of the
environmental monitoring community and management community
understand where the science is.
[Dr. Benes] Yeah.
[Participant] Yeah, I have no background in this.
So this would maybe just be from
the general public perspective.
And my brain is shutting off, so hopefully I don't...
(audio interference)
But thinking about that overlap and the duplication,
this is gonna be an amazing amount of information
for the public,
but if you have it coming from one network
and another network where you need a link
and the public goes from this site to that site,
and they don't know that they're two separate networks,
and you're graphically showing it in different ways,
that gets confusing.
So I would just say making sure
that from the public perspective, it's integrated.
The public doesn't need to know
that they're two separate networks.
Just don't even go there.
So does that make sense?
[Dr. Benes] Yeah, that makes sense.
And I think one of the challenges is that NESS would be
this federal network that would exist,
maybe more regionally but based and focused,
while this network would be maybe digging a little deeper
and focusing on high elevation areas
but also be managed by academic and nonprofit institutions.
So that's thinking about how to best collaborate,
and be able to produce something that's beneficial
for multiple stakeholders across the region.
[Participant] I would just add, Josh,
you were saying, we had 22-sites,
qualify those sites
'cause of three or four of 'em
are collecting a lot of different parameters.
Some of 'em have been there for 50-years
and some of them have been there for two-years.
Some of them are collecting snow data and precipitation,
some aren't.
And the long-term data sets,
there's a lot to be said about having a history
behind the site and quality control,
and that sort of thing.
[Dr. Benes] Great idea.
[Participant] Build on Tuesday,
all of that, keep kind of reminding you,
I feel like, yes, there is
duplication and overlap
and for the reasons you stated,
that's very common in research
and especially environmental research,
but money's limited, people are limited,
capacity's limited
collaboration's the only way we're going to get
the variety we need, the intensity we need.
So more time spent figuring out how to make that possible
across all those entities.
[Dr. Benes] Exactly, yeah.
[Participant] It reduces the need to spend
as much time on all the other stuff
we've already talked about.
[Dr. Benes] Yeah, awesome.
Well I think we're outta time here.
So really appreciate all of your contributions here today.
Thank you so much, and please feel free to continue
the discussion.
My contact information
and Erika's contact information as well.
Yeah, thank you so much.