Snow of Tomorrow | What is artificial snow made of?

Nora Els is a doctoral student at the Institute of Ecology and investigates the chemical and biological properties of artificial and natural snow in the "Lake and Glacier Ecology" working group. For a recently published study, she took samples in Obergurgel and compared artificial snow, fresh natural snow and older snow that has been on the slopes for some time. Here she summarizes the results of this study for us:

Do natural and artificial snow differ chemically and biologically?

Yes! Snow is a mixture of water, mineral and biological particles and chemical components. Natural and artificial snow differ greatly from each other chemically and biologically.

Artificial snow contains significantly higher amounts of dissolved sulphate, calcium, magnesium and potassium than natural snow. Natural snow, on the other hand, contains higher amounts of chloride, nitrogen and carbon. Sodium and ammonium are contained in comparable amounts. Artificial snow contains large mineral particles, natural snow contains more small mineral and biological particles, as well as parts of insects.

The concentration of bacteria is higher in artificial snow. The composition of bacteria and fungi in artificial snow largely corresponds to that of the reservoir from which the water for the snow cannons comes and its inflow and differs greatly from natural snow. Artificial snow contains a number of fungi from the air layer close to the ground, which were introduced during the production process. Natural snow can also contain fungi, but the concentration varies significantly more than in artificial snow.

Do these differences affect ecosystems?

When large quantities of artificial snow are produced and distributed, the input of nutrients and microorganisms into the alpine ecosystem changes.

While it is not known how many of the microorganisms survive in the ecosystems, the DNA of dead microorganisms can also be taken up and incorporated by other organisms.

Further research projects are needed to draw precise conclusions about the impact of the altered biological and chemical composition of artificial snow.

The study by Nora and colleagues was published in 2019 in the scientific journal Frontiers in Microbioloy:

Baloh, P., Els, N., David, R., Larose, C., Whitmore, K., Sattler, B., Grothe, H.: Assessment of Artificial and Natural Transport Mechanisms of Ice Nucleating Particles in an Alpine Ski Resort in Obergurgl, Austria; Frontiers in Microbiology; 2019.