Katreen Wikstrom Jones’ strongest memories from her winters growing up in Stockholm, Sweden are building snow tunnels on her porch. For the past ten years, Wikstrom Jones has been in Alaska, working for the state as a cryosphere hazard scientist. She originally got into snow science because she loves skiing, she says, and today snow is her full time job.
Wikstrom Jones is a part of the science team for Community Snow Observations. The goal of the citizen science project is to increase our understanding of snow depth distribution by increasing the number of ground observations in data sparse areas. These observations will help validate snow remote sensing data and hydrological models – which ultimately will provide, for example, water resource managers more accurate data to make better estimates of potential water supply that is stored in our mountain snowpacks. Contributing as a citizen scientist is easy: It only requires ...
