We present a unique long-term dataset of measurements of borehole temperature, repeated electrical resistivity tomography, and piezometric pressure to investigate the complex seasonal water flow in permafrost rockwalls. Our joint analysis shows that permafrost rocks are subjected to enhanced pressurised water flow during the thaw period, resulting in push-like warming events and long-lasting rock temperature regime changes.  

Global warming provokes permafrost to thaw, damaging landscapes and infrastructure. This study explores methods to slow this thawing at an alpine site. We investigate different methods based on passive and active cooling system. The best approach mixes both methods and manages heat flow, potentially allowing excess energy to be used locally.

Our study explores permafrost–glacier interactions with a focus on their implications for preparing or triggering high-volume rock slope failures. Using the Bliggspitze rock slide as a case study, we demonstrate a new type of rock slope failure mechanism triggered by the uplift of the cold–warm dividing line in polythermal alpine glaciers, a widespread and currently under-explored phenomenon in alpine environments worldwide.

Pseudo-relict rock glaciers look relict but contain patches of permafrost. They are poorly known in terms of permafrost content, spatial distribution and frequency. Here we use spring-water temperature for a preliminary estimate of the permafrost presence in rock glaciers of a 795 km² catchment in the Italian Alps. The results show that ~50 % of rock glaciers classified as relict might be pseudo-relict and might contain ~20 % of the ice stored in the rock glaciers in the study area.

The properties of the permafrost ground depend on its temperature and composition. We used temperature data from 29 boreholes in Switzerland to study how heat moves through different types of mountain permafrost landforms. We found that it depends on where you are, whether there is water in the ground and what time of year it is. Understanding these changes is important because they can affect how stable mountain slopes are and how easy it is to build things in mountain areas.

Reversal polarity is observed in rock glacier seismic refraction tomography. We collected several datasets observing this phenomenon in Switzerland and Italy. This phase change may be linked to interferences due to the presence of a thin low-velocity layer. Our results are confirmed by the modelling and analysis of synthetic seismograms to demonstrate that the presence of a low-velocity layer produces a polarity reversal on the seismic gather.

We monitor ground temperature, water pressure, and relative ice/water contents in a creeping ice-rich rock glacier in mountain permafrost to study its characteristics during a deceleration period with dry conditions and a summer heat wave. The snowpack has an important role as a provider of water and as a thermal insulator. Snow-poor winters, followed by dry summers, induce cooling and drying of the permafrost, leading to rock glacier deceleration.

Our paper concerns the use of a dense network of low-cost seismic accelerometers in populated areas to achieve rapid and reliable estimation of exposure maps in Trentino (northeast Italy). These additional data, in conjunction with the automatic monitoring procedure, allow us to obtain dense measurements which only rely on actual recorded data, avoiding the use of ground motion prediction equations. This leads to a more reliable picture of the actual ground shaking.

Long-term temperature measurements are challenging to carry out in mountain-permafrost boreholes. The widely used resistance thermistors are highly accurate but prone to drift when they are exposed to moisture, or the cable connecting them is stretched. We explore the possibility of supplementing them with digital sensors and analyse the performance of both systems at 15 depths in the same mountain-permafrost borehole.

In the last decades, geochemical investigations at the springs of rock glaciers have been used to estimate their drainage processes, and the frozen layer is typically considered to act as an aquiclude or aquitard. In this work, we evaluated the hydraulic behavior of a mountain permafrost site by executing a geophysical monitoring experiment. Several hundred liters of salt water have been injected into the subsurface, and geoelectrical measurements have been performed to define the water flow.

This paper documents a monitoring network of 54 positions, located on different periglacial landforms in the Swiss Alps: rock glaciers, landslides, and steep rock walls. The data serve basic research but also decision-making and mitigation of natural hazards. It is the largest dataset of its kind, comprising over 209 000 daily positions and additional weather data.

The Ice Memory project aims to extract, analyze, and store ice cores from worldwide retreating glaciers. One of the selected sites is the last remaining ice body in the Apennines, the Calderone Glacier. To assess the most suitable drilling position, geophysical surveys were performed. Reliable ground penetrating radar measurements have been positively combined with a geophysical technique rarely applied in glacier environments, the Frequency Domain Electro-Magnetic prospection.

The mechanical response of permafrost degradation on high-mountain rock slope stability has not been calculated in a numerical model yet. We present the first approach for a model with thermal and mechanical input data derived from laboratory and field work, and existing concepts. This is applied to a test site at the Zugspitze, Germany. A numerical sensitivity analysis provides the first critical stability thresholds related to the rock temperature, slope angle and fracture network orientation.