Skiers, alpine professionals and mountaineers are being asked to collect snow for a new research project.

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) hydrologist Dr Alice Hill is launching the Aotearoa Snow Isotope Project at this week’s Southern Hemisphere Alpine Conference in Wanaka this week. 

She is seeking the help of anyone who spends time in the alpine environment to collect a snow sample and send it to her for chemical isotope analysis. 

Isotope analysis of both snow and water downstream can tell scientists where the water came from, and is used to calculate how much snow melt is in the river.

“We’re asking patrollers, ski field staff, climbers, or avid skiers out for the day to collect a small snow sample. 

“Data on snow is very limited in New Zealand so any citizen science samples we get from this project will provide important information,” Alice says.

The winter snow season is her immediate data collection focus, but snow samples collected year-round will be valuable contributions to the data set.

The goal of the research is to determine the amount of meltwater making its way into rivers and groundwater and how that may change over time.  

“Snow is sensitive to rising temperatures and many industries, such as hydropower and agriculture, depend on snowmelt for their livelihoods so we need to know what to expect in the future.”

Climate change and human-induced activities, such as the ash deposits in New Zealand snowfields from Australian bushfires, are changing how much snow there is, when and how fast it melts, she says. 

“This means our downstream water resources that are partially sourced from snowmelt, like rivers and groundwater, may not look the same in the future [and] this has implications for the way regional councils manage water takes and for individual users, like farmers, who need some certainty around how much water they’ll have access to, and when.”

Alice is targeting specific snowfields in Canterbury but also wants snow samples from all over the South Island to help build the database.

She says collecting samples is easy. She has sample packs available, complete with instructions, a set of tubes, marker pen and a prepaid courier bag to send the samples back to her. 

A small amount of fresh surface snow needs to be scooped into the tube and some details of time and place recorded.

“Just let the snow melt and then send it back to me.”

Sampling packs will be available at the conference or she can be contacted by email [email protected] for sampling supplies.

The Southern Hemisphere Alpine Conference is being hosted by the Mountain Safety Council New Zealand at the Lake Wānaka Centre from May 26-27.

The two day conference is the only one of its kind in the southern hemisphere and provides a unique opportunity for the alpine community to engage in a series of workshops and presentations that seek to extend their professional skills, knowledge and experience, and contribute to a safer alpine community.