Published on 7 February 2020
Isis Brangers is a young doctorate student at KU Leuven working for the STEREO project C-SNOW. She is currently in the Idaho Rockies, studying the influence of snow properties on radar signals.
This week she takes over the Instagram account of the FWO, which co-finances her research through a travel grant. If you want to dive in the snow, and at the same time in the daily life of a researcher, go and follow her over at Instagram!
In an effort to better understand the interactions between radar waves and the snow pack, researchers compare terrain data—e.g. in a snow pit—with data recorded by a whole range of different radar sensors, both fixed and onboard aircraft.
These standardized measurements are being carried out all over the United States and are also used for the NASA SnowEx campaign in which Hans Lievens takes part, within the framework of the projects SNOPOST and C-SNOW.
This knowledge will be used to improve the current snow thickness estimates by the Sentinel-1 radar satellite, as well as the design of future satellite sensors.