Monitoring snow depth and cover at remote sites

Snow acts as an efficient insulator of soils, particularly in polar regions where air temperature can fall to below-30 °C (Coulson et al., 1995). The depth of the snow layer, the time of year when it first occurs and the time and manner that it melts, can be critical to the over-winter survival of soil organisms. However, such details are often dependent on human observation and are not available from remote, unoccupied sites. Most recording snow sensors (Fig 1 & 2) record the depth of snow at a single spot or over a very small area. The recent availability of high resolution digital cameras and the reduction in cost of solid state memory have enabled the development of systems to photographically record snow depth and cover over a much larger area. This poster describes a system developed by scientists and engineers at the British Antarctic Survey for deployment at very cold, inaccessible sites which may only be visited once a year