Integrated geomatic techniques for surveying glacial and recently deglaciated areas

Climate changes are more and more attracting the attention of the scientific community because of their direct impacts on geomorphic systems and human activities. A number of studies are currently under way to investigate the evolution of high elevation environments, which proved to be particularly sensitive to climate changes and point to increased in instability in areas of cryosphere occurrence. The here presented research has been developed in the framework of the Alcotra project n.56 “GlaRiskAlp”, by CNR-IRPI Torino in collaboration with the DST Torino - GeoSitLab laboratory and is aimed to the validation of an integrated geomatic approach for the evaluation of geomorphologic changes, and related hazards, in glacial and periglacial areas, in the contest of present climatic trends. The proposed approach is based on the coupling of remote sensing techniques and field surveys, in particular digital aerial photogrammetry and satellite imagery, terrestrial scanning LiDAR, and GNSS survey. High-resolution terrestrial LiDAR acquisition, processing and interpretation are used to map periglacial areas in the three dimensions. Laser-generated models offer a visualization tool that, through the comparison of DEMs of different years, allow to detect and to interpret even small geomorphologic changes in time. GNSS-networks are suitable tools for detecting changes over larger surfaces, or horizontal ones. Digital aerial photogrammetry and satellite images can be used to create ortophotos and DTMs of different years, allowing the reconstruction of main geomorphologic changes over the last 50 years. The proposed approach has been applied to case studies of the Piemonte region (Western Italian Alps).