Multi-temporal DEMs used to quantify the geomorphological impact of a late 20th century glacier re-advance at Schwarzberggletscher, Switzerland

Tonkin, TN, Midgley, NG ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0076-1785 and Cook, SJ, 2025. Multi-temporal DEMs used to quantify the geomorphological impact of a late 20th century glacier re-advance at Schwarzberggletscher, Switzerland. Geomorphology, 491: 110027. ISSN 0169-555X

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Abstract

Sedimentological investigations have advanced understanding of moraine formation at Alpine glaciers; however, few studies use multitemporal elevation datasets to observe landform generation during a period of glacier re-advance. Archive aerial image sets from 1974 to 2010 were processed using a photogrammetric workflow to visualise and quantify geomorphological change at the margin of Schwarzberggletscher, Switzerland. A combined co-alignment and iterative closest point-based approach was adopted to improve the comparative accuracy of the topographic datasets derived from the historical aerial imagery. This enabled the geomorphological impact of a glacier re-advance that occurred between 1974 and the early 1990s to be monitored. In the geospatial data, we recognise: (i) landform development associated with the advancing glacier terminus between 1974 and 1990; (ii) moraine erosion at the advancing, but fluctuating glacier margin; and (iii) the ablation of buried ice in the proglacial area between 1999 and 2010. The implications of this re-advance on the geomorphological record of glacier change are discussed, with this study providing a median and maximum error thresholded rate of surface lowering for ice-cored moraines of ∼0.2 ma−1 and ∼0.4 ma−1, respectively. Finally, this study highlights the potential of now-readily accessible datasets, and refined image processing workflows involving image co-alignment and fine registration, for aiding future geomorphological research in the Swiss Alps.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Geomorphology
Creators:	Tonkin, T.N., Midgley, N.G. and Cook, S.J.
Publisher:	Elsevier BV
Date:	15 December 2025
Volume:	491
ISSN:	0169-555X
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1016/j.geomorph.2025.110027 DOI 2505845 Other
Rights:	© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Divisions:	Schools > School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences
Record created by:	Laura Borcherds
Date Added:	01 Oct 2025 08:28
Last Modified:	01 Oct 2025 08:28
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54483

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