Both spatial and temporal information is important in agriculture. Information regarding the aboveground variables is ever increasing in terms of density and precision. On the contrary, belowground information lags behind and has been typically limited to time series. This study uses methods that map the subsurface spatial variability. Numerical simulations of aboveground and belowground water fluxes are then based on such spatial information and additional time-oriented datasets that are common in agriculture.

Different geophysical methods such as electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), seismic refraction tomography (SRT) and multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW) were jointly used to characterize the internal structure of the Flüela rock glacier, Switzerland. We show that the MASW method can efficiently resolve an ice-rich layer even in presence of a supra-permafrost water flow, a situation when SRT may fail. Our results are corroborated by seismic synthetic modelling.

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.

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.

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.