From scanning lidars, imaging spectrometers to our exclusive data processing pipeline, ASO provides the best available wide-area snow depth, water equivalent, and albedo data – a scope and accuracy that provides our customers a unique water management resilience.
First Mapping of Snow Water Equivalent Across Mountain Basins
Flight & Data Acquisition
ASO Inc. flies scanning lidars and imaging spectrometers over mountain watersheds with flight strategies optimized for near-real time decision-support.
Snow Product Generation
Using our exclusively licensed software, ASO Inc. rapidly processes lidar and imaging spectrometer retrievals into snow depth, snow water equivalent, and snow albedo/reflectivity. Our production pipeline is structured to enforce basin-wide accuracy, and to rapidly generate and deliver data products to users to assure timely utilization of the snowpack information.
Snowpack & Runoff Modeling
ASO Inc. snow depth, SWE, and albedo are assimilated into the iSNOBAL snowpack model to update and continuously track snowpack states. The snowpack model uses energy-balance components to monitor snowpack temperature, liquid water content, melt flux, and remaining snow mass in each 50 m grid cell. ASO primary data products are assimilated in the WRF-Hydro physically-based hydrologic model system. These ASO Inc.-constrained modeling results enable a state-of-the art snowmelt runoff forecast at daily to seasonal scales.