University of Saskatchewan's (USask) technicians Greg Galloway and Robin Heavens have completed the install of the wifi access point, ahead of the SPADE field campaign. This upgrade was taken on to ensure a strong wifi connection and direct line of sight towards the future LiDAR location. Once the ECCC instrumentation is installed, this will allow ECCC technicians to observe the instrumentation data remotely from Toronto during the May-June campaign. Moreover, with the installation of cameras, ECCC technicians will be able to see the condition of the instruments and the current weather conditions. The USask team has also installed the recently repaired optical disdrometer at Fortress Powerline on March 25, 2019. This is the same one used in the 2015 Kananaskis field campaign project and will start collecting some baseline data. Moreover, we will be checking to make sure that it is functioning properly before it is sent out to Nipika Mountain Resort late April. Thanks Greg and Robin for the successful installation! - Juris Almonte
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Professor Stephen Dery along with a couple members of the UNBC Northern Hydrometeorology Group Dr. Siraj Islam and Aseem Sharma went for a site visit to Nipika Mountain Resort after the Mountain Water Futures conference on March 4th, 2019 before making their way back to Prince George, BC. As we do not have remote connection to Nipika it was interesting to see the data. We've been following the precipitation amounts at Kootenay NP West Gate as a proxy for amounts at Nipika, being the nearest precipitation station. Since Jeremy Morris' last visit to Nipika (October 27th, 2018), Kootenay NP West Gate recorded 71 mm of precipitation. As it turns out, Nipika, ~20 km to the East and ~150 m higher in elevation received 135 mm over the same duration, almost double the amount of precipitation! Goes to show how variable precipitation can be over complex terrain. ![]() After a successful webinar with SPADE members and collaborators, it is now time to reflect and blog! Here is an overview of our webinar. Our SPADE team organized a 3.5 hour webinar broken up into several sections. We kicked off our webinar with a workshop on infographics by Stephanie Merrill from the GWF Knowledge Mobilization group at University of Saskatchewan. This workshop was focused on our project and how to better present our scientific work to our audience. In a society that is bombarded with rapid information, getting your research out quickly and effectively is key. Thanks to Stephanie's suggestions we are now equipped to create more meaningful posters with the right tools and resources! We then moved into more SPADE specific topics with an introduction to the project by Professor Julie Theriault, welcoming all the team and sharing the science questions SPADE are focused on. Andre Bertoncini from USask presented slides on the many hydrometeorological stations located at Fortress Mountain area and the research being conducted. Of interest to many was the recent use of SnoDrones equipped with LiDARs, an unprecedented way to conduct snow surveys. Robert Reed from Environment and Climate Change Canada gave us an overview of the equipment that he has prepped at King City, ON before heading out to Fortress for April. Robert also shared some safety precautions when using the equipment. Rest assured, we we will not be hovering over the MRR while it is running! This talk was followed by short 5 minute talks given by the HQP. It was a great chance for everyone to introduce themselves to the rest of the SPADE team and to hear about all the research progress and everyone's interest in the project! All the data from the field project are to be heavily utilized by the students and are an integral part to their research. Field participants whose research are not directly involved with SPADE had a chance to share their own research and their contributions to the project. For example, Jeremy Morris ran us through the Nipika area and the weather station that was installed Fall of 2018, which he was in charge of. The rest of our time was spent going over the safety and logistical aspects of the SPADE project, presented by Juris Almonte. This included dispelling some of the myths associated to wildlife safety. As some of the members have not been to the Canadian Rockies in the past it was important to dispel some wildlife myths! Overall the webinar was quite successful, especially for all the participants to meet each other. We even finished on time! Thank you to Professor Julie Theriault at UQAM for hosting Professor Stephen Dery and Juris Almonte for the week to discuss important SPADE matters. All in all it was a very productive week! - Juris Almonte SPADE project manager Please check out the following link for the webinar PDF slides:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wYqV048pVrtza3cvgDsgsKN8dyvF-eai |