Reporters are invited to participate in a virtual media roundtable with scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Los Alamos National Lab, Colorado State University, and Boise State University. They will introduce the Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL) campaign, the first-ever “bedrock-to-atmosphere” mountain observatory. SAIL will be collecting comprehensive observations to allow scientists to predict the future of water availability in the West.

Mountain watersheds provide up to 90% of water resources worldwide, and 40 million people rely on the Colorado River for water. But little is known about how all of the physical processes that affect water resources come together to control the water that the Colorado River produces now and in a changing climate. On September 1, the Department of Energy will launch this unprecedented climate observatory near the headwaters of the Colorado River to fill these gaps to understand the future of water.