SEASONAL SNOWPACKS ARE CRITICAL COMPONENTS OF THE GLOBAL ENERGY AND WATER CYCLES AND AN IMPORTANT WATER RESOURCE AND CLIMATE FEEDBACK. IN THE CURRENT ERA OF A CHANGING CLIMATE IT IS MORE CRITICAL THAN EVER TO ACHIEVE A ROBUST UNDERSTANDING OF SEASONAL SNOW DYNAMICS AND TO DEVELOP RELIABLE MEASUREMENT AND MONITORING SYSTEMS INCLUDING THE COMPLETE WIDE-AREA COVERAGE PROVIDED BY REMOTE SENSING. NEW HIGH-RESOLUTION SNOW DEPTH AND SNOW WATER EQUIVALENT (SWE) DATA PRODUCTS ARE NEEDED TO SUPPORT AND CONSTRAIN THE NEXT GENERATION OF LAND SURFACE AND HYDROLOGY MODELS TO SIMULATE AND FORECAST SNOW AND WATER CYCLE DYNAMICS. THE CHANGING AND VARIABLE SNOW COVER PRESENTS A FORMIDABLE MEASUREMENT CHALLENGE. DRIVEN BY COMPLEX ATMOSPHERIC TOPOGRAPHIC AND ECOLOGIC SYSTEM INTERACTIONS SEASONAL SNOW COVER PROPERTIES EXHIBIT STRONG VARIATION AT MANY SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL SCALES. QUANTIFICATION OF THIS VARIABILITY ACROSS SCALES WILL ENABLE PLANNING OF MEASUREMENT RESOLUTION AND EXTENT IN THE UPCOMING NEXT GENERATION COLD LAND PROCESSES EXPERIMENT (NG-CLPX) AND FUTURE AIRBORNE AND SATELLITE SNOW MISSIONS. THROUGH THIS PROPOSAL THE PI SEEKS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE NG-CLPX SCIENCE TEAM TO CONTRIBUTE TO DEFINITION OF SCIENCE QUESTIONS PRODUCE A COLLABORATIVE EXPERIMENT PLAN AND ASSIST IN LEADING THE INITIAL ROUNDS OF NG-CLPX IMPLEMENTATION. FIRST DISTRIBUTED ERROR PRODUCTS FOR LIDAR-DERIVED SURFACE ELEVATION AND SNOW DEPTH DATA SETS WILL BE DEVELOPED AND PRODUCED CRITICAL COMPONENTS FOR APPLICATION OF SNOW VOLUME ESTIMATES AND FOR QUANTITATIVE MODEL ASSIMILATION. SECONDLY VARIOGRAM FRACTAL ANALYSIS WILL BE APPLIED TO EXISTING NASA AIRBORNE SNOW OBSERVATORY (ASO) AIRBORNE LIDAR SNOW DEPTH PRODUCTS AND COINCIDENT GROUND-BASED LIDAR DATA SETS TO QUANTIFY SNOW DEPTH VARIABILITY ACROSS THE 1 TO 10000 M SCALE RANGE ENABLING MEASUREMENT RESOLUTION AND EXTENT DECISIONS FOR NGCLPX AND FUTURE MISSIONS.