The inaugural issue of the New Zealand Avalanche Dispatch (NZAD) is now available online. A community led initiative, NZAD provides a welcome platform for communicating ideas and issues around avalanche safety amongst professionals and recreationalists in the New Zealand context. The editorial team has done a great job putting together the first issue, with a ride range of engaging and informative articles. Members of the Mountain Research Centre are pleased to have been able to contribute to this issue.
In the Mountain Safety Council (MSC) update, recent summer studentship work undertaken by Matthew Wright and supervised by Aubrey Miller and Nicolas Cullen is profiled. This work involved the geo-spatial analysis and visualisation of MSC avalanche incident data, and is an early result of a collaboration between the MRC and MSC (more infomation here ). Meanwhile, Todd Redpath collaborated with David Hill of Oregon State University to add a New Zealand perspective to "Snow data or no data - It's up to you", an article detailing scientific approaches to seasonal snow measurement, and the benefit that is being seen from citizen science contributions in North America via the Community Snow Obs platform.
You can check out the first issue here . The NZAD is scheduled for two issues a year, aligning with the local snow season in New Zealand. We look forward to seeing and contributing to future issues!
