Influence of different digital terrain models (DTMs)on alpine permafrost modeling

The thawing of alpine permafrost due to changes in atmospheric conditions can have a severe impact, e.g., on the stability of rock walls. The energy balance model, PERMEBAL, was developed in order to simulate the changes and distribution of ground surface temperature (GST) in complex high-mountain t...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental Modeling & Assessment
Main Authors: Salzmann, N. (Nadine), Gruber, S. (Stephan), Hugentobler, M. (Marco), Hoelzle, M. (Martin)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2007
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ir.library.carleton.ca/pub/19177
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10666-006-9065-3
Description
Summary:The thawing of alpine permafrost due to changes in atmospheric conditions can have a severe impact, e.g., on the stability of rock walls. The energy balance model, PERMEBAL, was developed in order to simulate the changes and distribution of ground surface temperature (GST) in complex high-mountain topography. In such environments, the occurrence of permafrost depends greatly on the topography, and thus, the digital terrain model (DTM) is an important input of PERMEBAL. This study investigates the influence of the DTM on the modeling of the GST. For this purpose, PERMEBAL was run with six different DTMs. Five of the six DTMs are based on the same base data, but were generated using different interpolators. To ensure that only the topographic effect on the GST is calculated, the snow module was turned off and uniform conditions were assumed for the whole tes