S. McKenzie Skiles, PhD
Associate Professor, School of Environment, Society, & Sustainability, University of Utah
Director of the Snow Hydrology Research-to-Operations Laboratory, University of Utah
AGU Cryosphere Sciences President-Elect (2024)
Biography
Dr. S. McKenzie Skiles is a snow hydrologist and Director of the Snow HydRO Lab at the University of Utah. She obtained her PhD in Geography from UCLA. Her research focuses on "the amount of water held as snow, when and how fast it will melt, and how that is changing over time” (1). She has been a trailblazer in her field, developing new techniques for predicting snowmelt timing and producing research that is enabling us to better understand “the role snow plays in hydrology and climate” (1).
Her new monitoring techniques are important for her ongoing research regarding the persistence of snowpack here in our own Wasatch mountains. During both the 2017 and 2022 snowmelt seasons, she researched the effects of record high dust-on-snow deposition events to determine the impact these events had on snowmelt.
Her work in both the development of more accurate snow monitoring technologies as well as factors contributing to changes in snowmelt year over year are extremely important in our changing climate. Better understanding the factors that effect water levels in the Western US can help policymakers to make informed decisions about how to ensure water security as well as educate the populus about these issues so that we can elect leaders who are willing to work toward a future in which our freshwater resources are maintained.
Recent Publications
2024
- A new approach to net solar radiation in a spatially distributed snow energy balance model to improve snowmelt timing
- Response of Land Surface Albedo to Fire Disturbance in the Sierra Nevada Seasonal Snow Zone Over the MODIS Record
2023
- The shrinking Great Salt Lake contributes to record high dust-on-snow deposition in the Wasatch Mountains during the 2022 snowmelt season
- UAV Hyperspectral Imaging for Multiscale Assessment of Landsat 9 Snow Grain Size and Albedo
- Operational water forecast ability of the HRRR-iSnobal combination: an evaluation to adapt into production environments
2022
- Mapping snow depth and volume at the alpine watershed scale from aerial imagery using Structure from Motion
- Hourly Snow Energy and Mass Balance at Atwater Study Plot, Alta, Utah
for a full list of Dr. Skiles' peer-reviewed publications, please follow this link
Inverviews and Transcripts
To see the full-length interview conducted with S. McKenzie Skiles, PhD, please visit the video for the session on 3/20/21 and its corresponding transcript.