Snow water equivalent determination technique using narrow acoustic beam

Abstract

Snow packs generally consists of several layers of snow, which have different physical properties like tortuosity, porosity, density etc. Snow can be categorized into different types having different properties like granular, fluffy, dry or wet. One of the properties of snow is the amount of water that results from melting of snow-pack. The amount of water in snow is known as Snow Water Equivalent (SWE). SWE is useful in many areas like estimation of water availability from snow melt, assessment of snow-pack density etc. The information of density is used to estimate the strength of snow-pack. The knowledge of strength can be useful for the prediction of avalanche prone areas. There are several techniques available for the measurement of SWE. The techniques for SWE measurement are generally invasive and time consuming in nature. Researchers have developed noninvasive acoustic techniques for SWE measurement. But lot of assumptions are taken in these SWE measurement techniques, which results in inaccurate estimation of SWE. A new noninvasive acoustic technique based on use of very directional sound source and associated signal processing method is presented, in this paper. This new acoustic technique does not require calculation of reflection coefficients for SWE estimation.