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Journal article

400 years of debris flow activity and triggering weather conditions: Ritigraben VS, Switzerland

  • Stoffel, Markus Department of Geosciences, Geography Unit, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Lièvre, Igor Department of Geosciences, Geography Unit, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Conus, Delphine Department of Geosciences, Geography Unit, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Grichting, Michael A. Department of Geosciences, Geography Unit, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Raetzo, Hugo Swiss Federal Office for Water and Geology, Bienne, Switzerland
  • Gärtner, Holger W. Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, Birmensdorf, Switzerland
  • Monbaron, Michel Department of Geosciences, Geography Unit, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
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    2005
Published in:
  • Arctic Antarctic and Alpine Research. - 2005, vol. 37(3), p. 387-395
Debris flow
Tree ring
Dendrogeomorphology
Weather
Climate change
Valais
Alps
English Three major rainfall events have caused considerable damage in the Valais region (Swiss Alps) since 1987. While important debris flows originating from periglacial environments were recorded during the August 1987 and September 1993 rainfall events, no debris flows occurred in October 2000. This paper aims at putting these large area events and the apparent increase in debris flow frequency into a wider context by reconstructing the past debris flow activity in the Ritigraben torrent (Mattertal, Valais) with dendrogeomorphological methods. While only 10 debris flows were known for the torrent before the analysis (1922-2002), 53 events could be reconstructed with tree-ring analysis, going back to the year 1605. Results further show that the above-average concentration of events since 1987 was mainly caused by insufficient and short archival data. In fact, debris flows occurred even more frequently in the 19th century than they do today. The spatial distribution of injured trees in particular years further indicates that important events, like in 1993, always occurred in the torrent. Finally, reconstructed event years were compared with archival data on flooding in neighboring catchments. The comparisons prove that large area events like in 1987, 1993 or 2000 have at least been as common in the past as they are today.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences et de médecine
Department
Département de Géosciences
Language
  • English
Classification
Geography
License
License undefined
Identifiers
  • RERO DOC 5130
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/299865
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