Department Surface Waters - Research and Management

Glacier retreat has a number of implications across scales, ranging from altered natural hazards in mountain regions, over changes in hydrological regimes of such area, to hydropower production and sea-level rise.
In the frame of the Glacier Monitoring Switzerland (GLAMOS) program, a data set consisting of aerial photographs and digital elevation models has been acquired at very high-resolution since 2012, regularly covering about 100 individual glaciers. This project will leverage this unique data set to quantify and better understand various glaciological and periglacial processes in the Swiss Alps. 

The 4 aims of the project are:

1. Advancing the extrapolation of glacier mass balance from local measurements to the regional scale.
2. Assessing the abundance and formation of surface-collapse features on Alpine glacier tongues.
3. Quantifying periglacial sediment dynamics at the multi-catchment scale.
4. 3D visualization of annual aerial imagery and terrain models.