Mapping avalanches for safety
February 10, 2017
In 2014, an avalanche injured two Colorado avalanche control workers. They had been using an “avalauncher” compressed gas […]
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In 2014, an avalanche injured two Colorado avalanche control workers. They had been using an “avalauncher” compressed gas […]
Using GPS Multipath for Snow-Depth Estimation
In this month’s column, we look at a technique that uses interference fringes generated by signals arriving at an antenna directly from GPS satellites and those reflected by snow surrounding the antenna to measure its depth and how it varies over time. GPS for measuring snow depth; who would have thought?
The September “Innovation” column in this magazine,
“It’s Not All Bad: Understanding and Using GNSS
Multipath,” by Andria Bilich and Kristine Larson (see
www.gpsworld.com/multipath), mentions the use of multipath in studying soil moisture, ocean altimetry and winds, and snow sensing. An experiment the authors conducted, designed to study soil moisture, yielded a surprise bonus: a new methodology for measuring snow depth via GPS multipath. It has important implications for weather and flood forecasting, and could also bring new insight to bear on GPS antenna design.
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