A novel approach: community-driven snow depth measurement in Central Asia

This dataset contains over 1,000 snow depth measurements collected between February 2024 and March 2025 in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The data were gathered through a citizen science initiative involving local volunteers, who used simple rulers to measure snow depth and reported their observations every five days via the Telegram app. The measurements serve as ground-truth data for validating MODIS snow cover data processed with the MODSNOW-Tool, showing over 80% agreement. This work highlights the value of community participation in environmental monitoring and supports improved forecasting of mountain water resources in Central Asia.