Old MacDonald, meet Buck Rogers.

Dungeness Valley farmers soon could be using space-age technology to help them decide what crops to plant thanks to $1.6 million from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Specifically, NASA satellite images and computer programs could measure snowpack in the Olympic Mountains and forecast water levels and flow rates far earlier than old-tech predictions.

They could, for instance, have diagnosed last winter’s drought and told irrigators in Clallam County’s East End last spring how much water they’d have last summer.

Current SNOTEL (snowpack telemetry) and manual technology allows scientists to forecast only about a month in advance.

Only one of 21 grants

News of the three-year grant arrived Monday at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conversation Service office, where Tony Ingersoll coordinates the North Olympic Peninsula Resource Conservation & Development Council.

Ingersoll and Battelle Marine Sciences Laboratory hydrologist Tom Martin applied for the grant after NASA solicited proposals.

Ingersoll’s agency was one of only 21 groups that received grants out of 94 applicants.

Much of the money will buy scientists’ time from the Marine Sciences Division of Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Sequim and from the conservation service’s National Water and Climate Center in Oregon.

In all, 15 scientists will join in the project that will have eight major partners, including Olympic National Park, Clallam County and Peninsula College. The Lower Elwha Klallam and Jamestown S’Klallam tribes also will participate.

Other expenditures will include $30,000 for a new SNOTEL station in the headwaters of the Elwha River — including leasing a helicopter to airlift it into the Olympics — and computer hardware and software at the college.

NASA will fund additional education and outreach programs related to the grant up to $50,000.

Network of users

The most important part of the project, however, will be building the network of users, researchers and operators of the technology, Ingersoll said Tuesday, “connecting these three groups with tools NASA has on the shelf.

“By setting up this network, we can get the watersheds functioning with tools they can use.”