non-traditional path brings geography phd student manuel salgado to snow research meet manuel salgado a phd student in geographyapr 9 2021manuel salgado dr andrew klein and aj uehlinger conducting field work in grand mesa colorado (photo by manny salgado)sunset during fall field work in grand mesa colorado (photo by manny salgado)manuel salgado a phd student working with dr andrew klein in the department of geography at texas a&m university has led a non-traditional journey to higher-education today hes an experienced field researcher and teaching assistant and reflects on some of the challenges hes faced in his career early passion for science salgados passion for science was instilled at a very early age and his fascination with understanding how the world worked is what led him to pursing research and higher education i was always pretty curious at an early age and have wanted to be a scientist for as long as i can remember salgado said the idea of being able to figure out how the world works is extremely appealing to me when i was an undergrad at the university of new mexico (unm) i was fortunate that i had many professors who enabled my participation in their various research projects which helped me experience research firsthand he said i was pretty much hooked from then on journey to academia salgado experienced quite a few challenges prior to joining texas a&m geography im very much a non-traditional student; im pretty sure im the departments oldest current graduate student at 41 salgado said i didnt get a degree straight out of high school and instead tried out various jobs for about a decade at the age of 28 i went back to school at san antonio college and then two years later i transferred to the university of new mexico he said after undergrad i worked at a consulting firm in new mexico for a year before starting grad school here at a&m challenges while pursuing higher education salgado revealed his pathway to college was paved with many struggles my first attempt at college when i was 18 consisted of a semester at a community college where i did extremely poorly salgado said when i went back to school at 28 i did extremely well and i pretty much sailed through undergrad but grad school has been tough! i struggled with qualifying exams when i first arrived here salgado said after a change in departments and advisors i found a better fit with my current advisor andrew klein and he helped me get over that hurdle and i successfully completed my qualifying exams in addition to those challenges salgado discussed how other significant events affected his progress in research on top of that being that my research requires field measurements weve had to overcome a ton of obstacles in the field from incorrect gps measurements out of season weather events a government shutdown that led to a canceled field campaign and doing field work during the covid pandemic salgado said mapping snow in mountain environments salgados undergraduate senior thesis led him to choosing dr klein as an advisor while i was at unm i completed a senior thesis into how climate change was impacting snowpack and the streamflow that resulted from that snowpack melting salgado said dr kleins work with snow made him an excellent fit for me if i wanted to pursue that further once i transferred into the department of geography i had also spoken to a few of his former students who mentioned he was a great advisor who always looked out for his students so that made him an obvious choice salgados research focuses on assessing different aspects of snow distribution in mountainous regions using unmanned aerial vehicles (uavs) and 3d model visualizations my research involves the use of uavs in order to map snow in mountain environments and produce 3d models of the snow surface through a method known as structure from motion (sfm) salgado explained sfm involves the capturing of multiple images of an area from different angles then reconstructing the location of features located within those images in three dimensional space essentially we fly drones over an area of snow and take hundreds of pictures he said we use a gps system to capture centimeter-level accurate locations of targets we place in our field area and then we bring all that data back and use software to combine it and produce the 3d model by comparing models at different times we can see how the snow surface changes and by comparing the snow surface elevations to those of the same area with no snow we can calculate snow depth gaining experience from nasa field campaign salgado had the opportunity to participate in a nasa field campaign during his first year as a phd student which taught him the optimal direction of moving forward in his research my first year with dr klein we participated in a nasa field campaign called snowex salgado said my job during snowex was to use terrestrial lidar (tls) to scan study plots of snow tls scans produce 3d models of the snow surface these are usually highly accurate models he added however working with a large tls system in the snow is cumbersome and time consuming uavs on the other hand dont require you to move a heavy laser system through the snow over the course of a day but rather just require a short 20-minute flight to produce a very similar modelgps base station during field work in 2020 (photo by manny salgado)salgado and researchers digging out a stuck snow machine during a snowex campaign in early (pre-pandemic) 2020 (photo by manny salgado)snow science salgados research focus is on accurately assessing snow distribution and snow depth in grand mesa colorado while comparing results quality between airborne and terrestrial lidar systems with my research i am looking to find out how accurately we can measure snow properties such as depth and how these measurements compare with airborne and terrestrial lidar systems salgado said i would also like to quantify the variability and accuracy of models produced via uav sfm over snow finally we want to demonstrate that uav sfm works in challenging environments for other snow remote sensing locations such as alpine forests the field work salgado takes part in is drastically different between summer and winter months the two environments couldnt be more different he said our snow-free flights in late summer / early fall are a lot of fun colorado is absolutely gorgeous at that time of the year as the aspen leaves are changing and the weather is usually magnificent its an absolute privilege to be able to work in such a beautiful environment and it really hammers home how vital it is that we protect some of these places he emphasized winter field work is a little more challenging and it can be difficult to move around in the mountainous environment when it is covered with deep snow work in the winter is also quite beautiful but its also way more challenging he said i am a large man and as such i sink farther into the snow than some of my lighter colleagues! there have been times when i am sinking into snow up to my hips and moving around in that is quite difficult he added snow shoes help you stay on top of the snow surface but walking around with them also presents its troubles the number of times i have tripped with snow shoes on is quite high salgado said thankfully ive always had helpful and more experienced snow scientists around to help me out and ive gotten much better at getting around than when i first started it can still be a challenge however significant research salgado shared that the purpose of his research is to develop an efficient methodology that properly accounts for the complexities in snow research while i wouldnt say that my research contains the keys to solving global warming or even snow remote sensing problems (on its own anyway) i wouldnt do it if i didnt think it mattered salgado said snow remote sensing is an incredibly complicated field that faces a lot of obstacles to producing accurate global datasets that account for the amount of water stored in snow uav sfm definitely wont solve that but what it can do is provide us with a method of acquiring information on snow characteristics and dynamics on a small scale a better understanding of how the snow behaves on small scales furthers our understanding and can help produce better models of snow at larger scales he said utilizing uavs also proves to be a more affordable method to study something that is constantly changing uav sfm is a fairly inexpensive method that may open avenues to citizen science salgado shared there are currently many efforts to collect snow observations from the general public the great explosion in the number of uavs in use by the general public and the fact that my models are produced with these same small commercially available drones means that anyone who has a small uav they bought on amazon can produce these models i think theres a role for the general public to add to snow science through the widespread production of sfm models he said moving forward salgado is interesting in exploring the policy side of science and potentially continuing his current research and projects in other research institutes im a bit open on this right now he said i would love to continue to build upon my projects here once i graduate through a government research position or possibly a faculty position at a research university he is planning to graduate in the spring semester of 2022 however i am also quite interested in the policy side of science salgado said we are at the point where we need to start not only acting to prevent climate change but also enacting policy to counteract its effects that are already occurring i would love to find a position where i could advise policy makers and help craft environmental policy he said by mariam moeen ‘19