SATELLITE-BASED REMOTE SENSING PROVIDES THE ONLY MEANS TO MONITOR SNOW MASS OVER LARGE REMOTE REGIONS. THE MEASUREMENT CHALLENGE IS TO BRIDGE THE SCALE GAP FROM THE MICRO SCALES AT WHICH SHOW PHYSICS DETERMINES THE TRANSIENT NATURE OF SNOWPACK STRUCTURE TO THE SATELLITE OBSERVING SCALE. KEY FACTORS OF TRANSIENT SNOW STRUCTURE HETEROGENEITY ARE ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS ABOVE THE SNOWPACK (PRECIPITATION INPUT AIR HUMIDITY RADIATION TEMPERATURE AND WIND) AS WELL AS SNOWPACK RADIATIVE PROPERTIES (BROADBAND ALBEDO AND FREQUENCY DEPENDENT REFLECTIVITY AND EMISSIVITY) PROFILES AND GRADIENTS OF TEMPERATURE AND HUMIDITY GRADIENTS THROUGH ACCUMULATION METAMORPHOSIS AND MELTING PHASES. ON ACCOUNT OF THE HIGH SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL VARIABILITY OF SNOW COVERED AREA SURFACE ROUGHNESS SNOW DEPTH AND SNOW MICROPHYSICS GROUND-BASED MEASUREMENTS AT THE SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL RESOLUTION REQUIRED TO OBTAIN QUALITY MEASUREMENTS OF SNOW STRATIGRAPHY INCLUDING CHANGES IN SNOW DEPTH MICROSTRUCTURE AND DENSITY (SNOW WATER EQUIVALENT) ARE ESPECIALLY CHALLENGING AND MORE SO IN REGIONS OF COMPLEX TERRAIN WHICH ARE ALSO FREQUENTLY REMOTE REGIONS OF DIFFICULT ACCESS BECAUSE OF COMPLEX TOPOGRAPHY BUT ALSO BECAUSE OF THE UNDERLYING ALTITUDINAL AND LATITUDINAL CLIMATIC GRADIENTS. TO ADDRESS THIS CHALLENGE WE PROPOSE A SUITE OF DISTRIBUTED NONINTRUSIVE GROUND OBSERVATIONS TO BE INTEGRATED WITH CLASSICAL FIELD MEASUREMENTS OF SNOW IN PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT GENERATION COLD LANDS PROCESS EXPERIMENT TO CONSTRAIN AND EVALUATE COUPLED SNOW HYDROLOGY-MICROWAVE RADIATIVE TRANSFER MODELS FOLLOWED BY SCALING ANALYSIS OF SATELLITE AND AIRBORNE MICROWAVE (ACTIVE AND PASSIVE) MEASUREMENTS AND SNOWPACK STRUCTURE. THE OBJECTIVE IS TO IDENTIFY EMERGENT BEHAVIOR AT THE SATELLITE FOOTPRINT SCALE LEADING TO A PROGNOSTIC PHYSICAL STATISTICAL MODEL THAT RELATES THE TEMPORAL EVOLUTION OF MULTI-FREQUENCY MULTI-SENSOR MULTI-SCALE MICROWAVE OBSERVATIONS AT COARSER RESOLUTION TO THE SPACE-TIME EVOLUTION OF SNOW STRUCTURE AND SWE AT HIGH-SPATIAL RESOLUTION. ULTIMATELY SUCH PARAMETERIZATION CAN BE INTEGRATED WITH EXISTING RETRIEVAL ALGORITHMS TO ESTIMATE SWE OVER LARGE REGIONS OR IN MACRO SCALE HYDROLOGY AND CLIMATE MODELS TO DESCRIBE THE SUB-GRID SCALE HETEROGENEITY OF SHOW PHYSICS.