(Online) Should I Teach My Kids to Ski? The Future of Snow in the Western US

Join the Mazama Conservation Committee for Melting Mountains: More Than A Decade Later, an online series of presentations on the impact of climate change on alpine environments. Our first presenter is Dr. Anne Nolin, who will be answering the question, "should I teach my my kids to ski?"

How has snow cover changed over the past 50 years and how will it change in the future? Will there be fewer days of snow cover? Will there be mid-winter melt events? Will the snow disappear earlier each spring? Will it be too warm for ski resorts to make snow? Where will snowfall be most dependable and where will it be most at risk of converting to rain? Should we teach our children to ski and snowboard? These are the questions that motivate this week’s presentation. The main topic will be changing western US snowpacks and potential impacts on the places where we love to recreate in the mountains. Not all the focus will be on ski resorts but that’s a starting point for some of the conversation.

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkceuvqz8tHtNffGdbIEJfFhSGM4AXico6

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About the Presenter 

Dr. Anne Nolin is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Nevada, Reno where she leads the Computational Mountain Studies research group. She also serves as Director of UNR’s Graduate Program of Hydrologic Sciences. Her research focuses on the interactions of climate with mountain snowpacks and glaciers, and mountains as social-environmental systems. Dr. Nolin received her Ph.D. degree in Geography from the University of California-Santa Barbara. She has performed fieldwork in Greenland, Alaska, New Zealand, and across the western US. She and her students have published on “at risk” snow, melting glaciers from Alaska to the Andes, water resources in a time of declining snowpacks, and new ways of mapping ice from space.