Toward correlating California's wilderness snow sensors

Following a strict interpretation of the Wilderness act (P.L. 88-577), the US Forest Service (USFS) insisted and the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) agreed to correlate the wilderness snow sensors with sensors outside USFS-administered wilderness. Further, SWR agreed to install these 19 wilderness snow sensors by 1989, and to remove them by 2004. This paper outlines the progress that has been made on this correlation effort. Topics reviewed are: 1) background of the USFS/DWR agreement and subsequent events, 2) installation and operational status of the wilderness and correlative snow sensors, 3) techniques for editing snow sensor data, 4) efforts to develop and test a suitable statistical methodology for performing the correlations, and 5) an attempt to estimate the effects of removing the wilderness snow sensors on water supply forecasting, assuming succssful correlations. Finally, the authors speculate on the future of the correlation effort and possible alternatives.