snow research

The bright, pristine slopes are calling your name. You head up to the mountain at sunrise, strap on your skis, and hit the first run. Only, instead of the immaculate white snow you had been dreaming about, you find the snowpacks are not as bright white as they should be, and your run is accompanied by streams of melting snow following you down the side of the mountain. The culprit? Soot. This pollutant has been darkening and melting snow-covered mountains for awhile, but the first experiments to quantify how much soot contributes to snowpack melt were only carried out recently.

The Wolf River Bridge in Crandon, Wisconsin, was once notorious for its treacherously slick pavement, which caused several accidents every winter. Workers routinely applied rock salt, but traffic quickly wore it away. So the city turned to civil engineer Russ Alger for help.