Publications related to Alpine tundra

Influence of sun cups on surface albedo of wet Alpine snowpack

Michael Lehning, Mathias Thierry Pierre Bavay, Francesca Carletti

In high elevation Alpine areas, characterised by high snow accumulation and radiation-driven melt processes, the formation of peculiar ablation features called sun cups can be observed. Sun cups likely influence the energy and mass balance of the wet snowp ...

2024

Multi-temporal forest monitoring in the Swiss Alps with knowledge-guided deep learning

Devis Tuia, Gaston Jean Lenczner, Thiên-Anh Claris Nguyen, Marc Conrad Russwurm

Monitoring forests, in particular their response to climate and land use change, requires studying long time scales. While efficient deep learning methods have been developed to process short time series of satellite imagery, leveraging long time series of ...

Elsevier Science Inc2024

Mapping forest in the Swiss Alps treeline ecotone with explainable deep learning

Devis Tuia, Benjamin Alexander Kellenberger, Thiên-Anh Claris Nguyen

Forest maps are essential to understand forest dynamics. Due to the increasing availability of remote sensing data and machine learning models like convolutional neural networks, forest maps can these days be created on large scales with high accuracy. Com ...

Elsevier2022

Water vapor transport in snowpacks

Mahdi Jafari

This thesis is an in-depth treatment of water vapor transport in snowpacks and its impacts on snow structure. The aim is to better understand this transport process and to lay the basis for a model representation in physics-based multi-layer snow models. O ...

EPFL2022

Future water temperature of rivers in Switzerland under climate change investigated with physics-based models

Michael Lehning, Wolf Hendrik Huwald, Adrien Michel, Bettina Schaefli, Nander Wever

River ecosystems are highly sensitive to cli-mate change and projected future increase in air tempera-ture is expected to increase the stress for these ecosystems. Rivers are also an important socio-economic factor impact- ing, amongst others, agriculture, ...

2022

Introducing CRYOWRF v1.0: multiscale atmospheric flow simulations with advanced snow cover modelling

Varun Sharma, Michael Lehning, Franziska Gerber

Accurately simulating snow-cover dynamics and the snow-atmosphere coupling is of major importance for topics as wide-ranging as water resources, natural hazards and climate change impacts with consequences for sea-level rise. We present a new modelling fra ...

2023

Changes in Climatology, Snow Cover, and Ground Temperatures at High Alpine Locations

Michael Lehning

Knowledge about changes in ground temperatures under a changing climate is important for many environmental, economic, and infrastructure applications and can be estimated by transient numerical simulations. However, a full annual cycle of precipitation da ...

2020

Mountain snow: The source of the mother river—Study of multi-scale and multi-physical process of spatio-temporal evolution of snow distribution

Guang Li

Snow is one of the most active elements on the earth, which is an important mass source of polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers, as well as a main supply for the runoff. Its distribution and evolution have a great impact on global hydrological cycle, ecosy ...

2020

The Legacy Effects of Winter Climate on Microbial Functioning After Snowmelt in a Subarctic Tundra

Konstantin Svetlozarov Gavazov

Warming-induced increases in microbial CO2 release in northern tundra may positively feedback to climate change. However, shifts in microbial extracellular enzyme activities (EEAs) may alter the impacts of warming over the longer term. We investigated the ...

SPRINGER2019

From the clouds to the ground - Effects of flow-precipitation interactions on snow distribution in complex alpine terrain

Franziska Gerber

Knowledge about the spatial distribution of seasonal snow is essential e.g. to efficiently manage fresh water resources or for hydro-power companies. The large-scale gradient of snow accumulation over mountain ranges is mainly determined by lifting condens ...

EPFL2018

Nuove ecologie alpine: industrializzazione e costruzione della città-territorio

Roberto Sega

This research study offers a reflection on the Alpine urban condition through the observation of the spaces of production. Departing from the premise that the tourist economy cannot be the only possible horizon for Alpine development, this thesis reflects ...

EPFL2018

Characterisation of the melting layer variability in an Alpine valley based on polarimetric X-band radar scans

Alexis Berne, Floortje Elisabeth Maria Van den Heuvel, Marco Gabella, Urs Martin Germann

The melting layer designates the transition region from solid to liquid precipitation, and is a typical feature of the vertical structure of stratiform precipitation. As it is characterised by a well-known signature in polarimetric radar variables, it can ...

COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH2018

Soil Moisture Estimation by SAR in Alpine Fields Using Gaussian Process Regressor Trained by Model Simulations

Jean-Philippe Thiran, Jelena Stamenkovic

In this paper, we address the problem of retrieving soil moisture over a grassland alpine area from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data using a statistical algorithm trained by simulations of a physical model. A time series of C-band VV-polarized Wide Swat ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2017

Attenuation of wind-induced pressure perturbations in alpine snow

Wolf Hendrik Huwald, Marc Parlange, Chad Higgins

Windpumping has been identified as a process that could potentially enhance sublimation of surface snow at high forcing frequency and spawn air movement deeper in firn at lower frequencies. We performed an experiment to examine the relationship between hig ...

International Glaciological Society2016

Effect of Natural Weathering on Durability of Pultruded Glass Fiber-Reinforced Bridge and Building Structures

Thomas Keller, Anastasios Vassilopoulos, Julia De Castro San Roman Fest, Nikolaos Alexandros Theodorou

After 17 and 15years of use, respectively, a detailed inspection of a pedestrian bridge and a 5-story building structure composed of partly adhesively bonded pultruded glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) profiles was conducted accompanied by full-scale s ...

American Society of Civil Engineers2016

Sustainable Land Use in Mountain Regions Under Global Change: Synthesis Across Scales and Disciplines

Alexandre Buttler, François Gillet, Adrienne Grêt-Regamey, Thomas Spiegelberger, Heike Lischke

Mountain regions provide essential ecosystem goods and services (EGS) for both mountain dwellers and people living outside these areas. Global change endangers the capacity of mountain ecosystems to provide key services. The Mountland project focused on th ...

Resilience Alliance2013

Vegetation-environment relationships in alpine mires of the West Carpathians and the Alps

Lucia Sekulova

QuestionsHow do two distant mountain ranges differ in their vegetation-environment relationships, overall species composition and its variability and species richness of vascular plants and bryophytes in alpine fens and bogs? Is the floristic difference co ...

Wiley-Blackwell2013

Functional traits and root morphology of alpine plants

Alexandre Buttler

Background and Aims Vegetation has long been recognized to protect the soil from erosion. Understanding species differences in root morphology and functional traits is an important step to assess which species and species mixtures may provide erosion contr ...

Oxford University Press2011

Isotopic analysis of cyanobacterial nitrogen fixation associated with subarctic lichen and bryophyte species

Konstantin Svetlozarov Gavazov

Dinitrogen fixation by cyanobacteria is of particular importance for the nutrient economy of cold biomes, constituting the main pathway for new N supplies to tundra ecosystems. It is prevalent in cyanobacterial colonies on bryophytes and in obligate associ ...

Springer Netherlands2010

A near-annual palaeohydrological study based on testate amoebae from a sub-alpine mire: surface wetness and the role of climate during the instrumental period

Edward Mitchell, Mariusz Lamentowicz

We present the first testate amoeba-based palaeohydrological reconstruction from the Swiss Alps, and the first depth to the water table (DWT) calibration data-set for this region. Compared to existing models, our new calibration data set performs well (RMS ...

2010