Wyoming’s mountain snowpack is more than a sign of winter—it is the Upper Green River Basin's most important natural reservoir, supplying water to communities, agriculture, wildlife, and downstream users throughout the Colorado River system. But snow does not accumulate or melt evenly across the landscape. Forest cover, terrain, weather, and past management practices all influence where snow is stored and when it becomes available as runoff.
To better understand these relationships, a snowtography station in the Wyoming Range, near McDougal Creek, has been installed. The project uses game cameras programmed to photograph snow-depth measurement stakes at specific intervals. Combined with weather, precipitation, and soil-moisture monitoring, these repeated observations will provide detailed information about how forest conditions affect snowpack and water supplies in the Upper Green River Basin.
The project is a partnership between the Sublette County Conservation District, Colorado River Sustainability Campaign, The Nature Conservancy, USDA Agricultural Research Service-Southwest Watershed Research Center, the University of Wyoming, and the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The focus: improve water-supply forecasting, better inform forest-management decisions, support wildfire-resilience planning, and strengthen long-term watershed stewardship.
Why McDougal Creek?
McDougal Creek was selected for its mix of forest conditions representing different management histories, including varying types of timber harvests conducted over several decades. This diversity provides an ideal setting for studying how forest management influences snow storage and melt. Furthermore, the site is strategically located near the Triple Peak SNOTEL station, providing access to valuable long-term weather and snowpack records.
Measuring snow across the landscape
Unlike traditional snow-monitoring sites that collect data at a single location, Snowtography uses a network of observations to capture how snow conditions vary across different forest types, terrain, and management histories.
The McDougal Creek station includes 150 snow-depth measurement stakes and over 60 associated cameras, 13 data loggers, several dozen soil-moisture sensors, two meteorological stations, four wind sensors, 45 point dendrometers, and an automated station similar to a SNOTEL site to measure snowfall and snow-water equivalent.
Together, these tools will help researchers track how snowpack, soil moisture, weather, and forest structure interact across the study area. The measurements will also help researchers evaluate snowmelt, sublimation, and soil-water dynamics.
Better information for water and forest management
Snowtography is designed to complement existing monitoring by providing a more detailed picture of how snow is distributed across the landscape. These insights are intended to improve estimates of snowmelt timing and runoff. Understanding how different forest conditions affect snow retention, soil moisture, and water availability later in the season could help inform future forest-management decisions while supporting wildfire resilience and watershed health. Researchers also plan to use the data to improve models that simulate how forests, snowpack, and water supplies may respond to future management and climate conditions.
The McDougal Creek Snowtography project is planned as a 10-year monitoring effort. Long-term data will help land managers and water planners track changes over time in the Upper Green River Basin.
Why it matters
At its core, the project seeks to answer a fundamental question: How do forest conditions influence the snow that becomes the Upper Green River Basin’s water supply? By providing detailed local measurements over the next decade, Snowtography will allow researchers to better understand that connection and provide land and water managers with more information for navigating changing forest and watershed conditions. In an area where snowmelt is the lifeblood of Wyoming and the broader Colorado River system, understanding what happens to snow before it becomes streamflow is increasingly important.
