A 2015 study estimates about 2 billion people’s drinking water rely heavily on snowmelt. In the past half century, many regions in the Western United States have faced snowpack level declines, meaning reduced water supplies. The snow melts in the seasonal cycles are seeing worrisome signs due to global climate change in recent years, e.g., the ongoing exceptional drought in the western U.S. The capability of closely and timely monitoring the key factors such as timing, magnitude, and duration of the snowpack is vital in order to effectively evaluate the influences on the downstream water discharge.

The purpose of this project is to provide an easily accessible mobile application that allows Americans to track where their snowmelt comes from. This could help farmers and those who rely on local freshwater to understand how their water supply will be affected by influences to their snow sources. In building our app, we used Google’s Flutter framework, a web service from the USGS, and NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) snow cover products. We utilized advice from various snow hydrologists from University of Washington, ESIP, and HydroShare to guide the methodology for our server side. We successfully implemented a working prototype application that is able to output snowmelt sources for your current geographical location. We plan to publish SnowSource on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store for everyone to use free of charge.

In 2022, we worked to improve the app with capabilities to forecast snow water equivalent using machine learning technique.

This is an effort of a GMU ASSIP Summer Intern team.