Marketa McGuire

Current Research

I am currently maintaining the Snake River Basin portion of the U.S. West-wide Seasonal Streamflow Forecasting Project website.

I have also created a new webpage for my Snake River Basin Forecasting Pilot Project, which includes streamflow and storage forecasts for several locations in the Snake River basin, utilizing MODIS remotely sensed snowcover to update forecast initial conditions.

Background for Masters Thesis Research:

In regions like the Snake River basin, where spring and summer streamflow is dominated by snow-melt, snow cover extent is an important variable for seasonal streamflow forecasts. My study evaluates the impact of utilizing remotely sensed snow cover to update initial conditions for streamflow forecasts. Previous work by Maurer et al (2003) suggests that MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) remotely sensed snow cover products have the potential to improve hydrological modeling and prediction in the Missouri and Columbia basins. MODIS collects images of snow cover at 500m resolution once per day, subject to cloud cover, at 500 m spatial resolution. MODIS snow products are available from February 2000 in near-real time (availability of the images is within 3-6 days of collection) Given the limitations of meteorological station data, estimates of forecast initial conditions based on surface data alone have large uncertainty, which MODIS snow cover data have the potential to reduce.

Presentations / Publications

UW-UBC Annual Fall Hydrology Workshop:

Presentation Fall 2003 (.ppt)

Slide Annotation (Word .doc)

American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2003:

Poster Presentation (.ppt)