Snow covered area (SCA) observations from the Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) were used in combination with a distributed snowmelt model to estimate snow water equivalent (SWE) in the headwaters of the Rio Grande basin (3,419 km2) - a spatial scale that is an order of magnitude greater than previous reconstruction model applications. In this reconstruction approach, modeled snowmelt over each pixel is integrated over the time of ETM+ observed snow cover to estimate SWE. Considerable differences in the magnitude of SWE were simulated during the study. Basin-wide mean SWE was 2�6 times greater in April 2001 versus 2002. Despite these climatological differences, the model adequately recovered SWE at intensive study areas (ISAs); [...]
