K.D. Nelson Lecture Series – Dr. Eric Sproles

The Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences presents the K.D. Nelson Lecture Series featuring speaker Dr. Eric Sproles. His talk is titled: Integrating novel measurements of snow, water, and ice and what we learn from them. 

Freshwater cools our planet and quenches our thirst, and this cornerstone of life is everywhere – in our planet’s air, rivers, lakes, plants, soils, and aquifers. The ubiquitous nature of freshwater makes taking meaningful measurements that much more challenging and translating these measurements into process-based insights that much harder. Eric Sproles will present his research team’s multiple approaches to measuring water across geographies, with an emphasis on seasonal snow and ice, and how they (try) to transition these measurements into process-based knowledge.

Eric Sproles is an Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Montana State University and leads the Geospatial Snow, Water, and Ice Research Lab (GeoSWIRL). His research efforts integrate GIScience and remote sensing with field-based measurements and models to better understand the geospatial and climatic controls on the world’s water resources. His efforts focus primarily on snow, and span the climates and cultures of the western United States and South America. Eric also serves as the Director of the Geospatial Core Facility at Montana State.