The Challenge
Colorado’s spring runoff forecasts drive high-stakes water decisions, yet traditional snow monitoring can miss how much water is stored across entire watersheds. CASM was created to expand high-accuracy, basin-scale snow measurements and translate them into actionable forecasts for reservoirs, drought planning, and multi-sector water management. The challenge was building a coordinated statewide program that delivers credible science, equitable coverage, and consistent communication to a diverse stakeholder community.
Our Solution
Spheros Environmental (formerly LRE Water) provides program management and technical leadership for CASM on behalf of the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), coordinating flight planning, funding, and stakeholder engagement. We maintain ColoradoSnow.org as the public hub for ASO reports, data products, and program materials, and convene regular meetings with nearly 100 agencies statewide. Our team bridges the full science-to-decisions chain, connecting flight timing and lidar acquisition to snowpack modeling (iSnobal) and forecast integration efforts (e.g., WRF-Hydro and experimental forecast workflows).
Program manager and technical advisor
Results +What makes this unique
CASM has matured into a durable, stakeholder-driven program that coordinates science, operations, and funding at statewide scale. We support CWCB with funding strategy and administration, and provide transparent public-facing communications so agencies can confidently use ASO-informed products. What makes this work unique is the end-to-end integration: understanding the limits and strengths of each step (flight logistics, lidar-derived depth, iSnobal SWE, and forecast assimilation) and translating that into decisions Colorado water managers can act on. Spheros has become known by water managers statewide as experts at the cutting edge of snow monitoring and water supply forecasting.
ASO provides detailed information into the snowpack like we have never seen before… [and] allows for a finer level of water management.
Project Experts
