Stuefer awarded NASA research grant

Svetlana Stuefer, an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Geological and Environmental Engineering, was recently awarded a three-year NASA EPSCoR research award. 

Stuefer's project, titled “Data assimilation and modeling to improve snow water equivalent assessment in Alaska," was selected last year by the Alaska NASA EPSCoR program from a pool of competitive pre-proposals.

The project’s abstract says the goal is to contribute to the snow water equivalent uncertainty analysis that lays the foundation for NASA’s Terrestrial Hydrology Program snow-focused observing system simulation experiment.

Snow water equivalent assessment “is challenging in many areas of North America, but the situation is especially complicated in Alaska with the state’s sparse — and diminishing — snow observation network, extreme topographic gradients, and a vast spatial extent,” the abstract reads.

“The advantage of our group is that we have collected, documented, and maintained consistent and repeated ground-based weather and [snow water equivalent] time series over a large region of northern Alaska."

The scope of work is also coordinated with the upcoming NASA’s SnowEx field campaign that will take place near Fairbanks and on the North Slope in 2021–2023.

The project will focus on the region north of 64 degrees north latitude and continues the legacy of UAF snow research in the Arctic through collaboration with NASA’s Terrestrial Hydrology Program and the Goddard Space Flight Center.

More information on NASA EPSCoR can be found at the NASA EPSCoR website

More information on the Alaska NASA EPSCoR program as well as our current Research CAN opportunity can be found at the CAN Grants website.