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Mission Statement
Terrain State Characterization...
- Understanding and modeling variables describing terrain including vegetation, snow, ice, and urban features.
- Transport of gas, water, and vapor in snow and soils.
- Dynamics of terrestrial material properties forced by weather and climate.
- Impacts of environmental change on military and civil operations, including changes in terrain state, hydrology, meteorology, vegetation, snow and ice cover.
...and Cryospheric Sciences...
- Use of autonomous buoys to develop a mass balance climatology of sea ice.
- Ice accumulation and protection on aircraft and marine structures.
- Permafrost degradation and its impact on infrastructure and transportation.
- Snow microstructure and metamorphism.
- Ice core records that provide a "window" to past climates.
- Ice albedo feedback.
- Glacier mass balance and outburst flooding.
...Across a Range of Scales
- Identify terrain features and soil strength with spectral imagery.
- Microscale simulation of thermal conduction in snow.
- Radiant temperature variations in grass.
- Sensor performance prediction in a variety of terrain.
- Modeling freezing rain return periods in complex terrain.
- Investigate past, present, and future polar climate.
- Snow mapping using remote sensing.
Current Research Areas
- Properties and processes of polar, terrestrial, and marine environments.
- Physics-based models that predict terrain conditions in a wide range of environments.
- Physical properties of snow and ice.
- Predicting viewable gap fraction and solar flux as a function of vegetation, slope and aspect.
- Infrared and hyperspectral terrain properties.
- Sea ice and glacier ice mass balance.
- Mass, energy, and chemical exchanges from microscale to synoptic scale.
- Aviation impacts-icing, blowing dust and snow.
- Making practical (and sometimes rapid) assessments of the character, extent and fate of the snow cover over relevant watersheds.
- Discrete element modeling of soil, snow and floating ice properties.
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