News - Keith Musselman

INSTAAR Fellow Keith Musselman has joined the Department of Geography. He studies how mountain snowpack supports sustainable ecosystems and water supply for people, wildlife, and agriculture.

Streamflow is increasing in Alaskan rivers during both spring and fall seasons, primarily due to increasing air temperatures over the past 60 years, creating dangers and difficulties for local communities. New CU Boulder-led research quantifies consequences already observed and experienced for generations by local Indigenous communities who rely on these rivers for their livelihoods.

Another round of powerful atmospheric rivers is hitting California, following storms in January and February 2023 that dumped record amounts of snow. This time, the storms are warmer, and are triggering flood warnings as they bring rain higher into the mountains on top of the snowpack. Keith Musselman explains the complex risks rain on snow creates and how they might change in a warming climate.

As climate changes, previously frozen chemical runoff from farms and fields puts water quality at risk in over 40 states, research says. Keith Musselman part of team looking at winter nutrient pollution, a new problem caused by climate change.

A convergence research project is uniting land managers, local residents, and scientists to jointly understand how Colorado Front Range ecosystems and public lands are responding to pressures from people and climate change.

A new study that included Will Wieder and Keith Musselman finds that snow-free seasons are expected to last longer, putting Northern Hemisphere water supplies at risk.

Water resources will fluctuate increasingly and become more difficult to predict in snow-dominated regions across the Northern Hemisphere by later this century, according to a comprehensive new climate change study. Even regions that keep receiving the same amount of precipitation will experience more variable and unpredictable streamflow as snowpack recedes.

Keith Musselman was interviewed for this CBS Denver news story on the effects of climate change on deep snowpack.

Because of climate change, the snowpack in the Western U.S. is already 20% less than it was in the 1950s, a volume of water that could fill Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the country. By the end of the century, most years in the region could be nearly snowless. Keith Musselman is interviewed.

The ground, typically moist from snow this time of year, was dry and flammable as a result of unusually warm temperatures and a lack of precipitation in recent months, said experts including INSTAAR snow hydrologist Keith Musselman.