Permafrost in Austria: Impact of climate change on alpine permafrost and related hydrological effects - Final Report

The aim of this project is the quantitative assessment of alpine permafrost in a welldefinedcatchment area, the impact of permafrost on climate warming and theestablishment of a hydrological model to understand the associated changes. Themulti-disciplinary project combines methods from geology, hydrology, meteorology,geodesy and geophysics to investigate permafrost in unconsolidated sediments andtheir consequences on the hydrological regime. The appearance of permafrost isindicated by active rock glacier, patterned ground, sorted stripes, outcrops of frozenground and the high frequency of rock falls.Beside of the previous investigated rock glaciers Reichenkar (Stubai Alps, Tyrol),Kaiserbergtal and Olgrube (Otztal Alps, Tyrol) we selected a study area in theKrummgampen valley (Glockturm-Weisseespitze, Otztal Alps) to investigate theimpact of permafrost on the hydrological regime. First we use existing models andgeomorphologic mapping to estimate the local permafrost distribution. On this basiswe select areas for the seismic mapping and the measurements of ground temperature(BTS). Afterwards we use these field observations to model the lateral and verticalpermafrost distribution. To assess the sediment volume and hydrologic relevantparameters we use further geophysical methods. The major aims for the hydrologicalinvestigations are as following: (a) Establishment of a numerical stream flow modelusing the permafrost and sediment distribution maps, (b) Monitoring of relevantmeteorological, hydrologic parameters such as discharge, precipitation andtemperature, (c) Calibration of the numerical model by the field data.