Université de Fribourg

Assessing the potential of soil moisture measurements for regional landslide early warning

Wicki, Adrian ; Lehmann, Peter ; Hauck, Christian ; Seneviratne, Sonia I. ; Waldner, Peter ; Stähli, Manfred

In: Landslides, 2020, p. -

In mountainous terrain, rainfall-induced landslides pose a serious risk to people and infrastructure. Regional landslide early warning systems (LEWS) have proven to be a cost-efficient tool to inform the public about the imminent landslide danger. While most operational LEWS are based on rainfall exceedance thresholds only, recent studies have demonstrated an improvement of the forecast...

Université de Fribourg

Meltwater infiltration into the frozen active layer at an alpine permafrost site

Scherler, Martin ; Hauck, Christian ; Hoelzle, Martin ; Stähli, Manfred ; Völksch, Ingo

In: Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 2011, vol. 21, no. 4, p. 325–334

A coupled heat and mass transfer model simulating mass and energy balance of the soil-snow-atmosphere boundary layer was applied to simulate ground temperatures, together with water and ice content evolution, in the active layer of an alpine permafrost site on Schilthorn, Swiss Alps. Abrupt shifts and subsequent fluctuations in ground temperature observed in alpine permafrost boreholes at the...