Titre
Towards a hydrogeomorphological understanding of proglacial catchments: an assessment of groundwater storage and release in an Alpine catchment
Type
article
Institution
UNIL/CHUV/Unisanté + institutions partenaires
Périodique
Auteur(s)
Müller, Tom
Auteure/Auteur
Lane, Stuart N.
Auteure/Auteur
Schaefli, Bettina
Auteure/Auteur
Liens vers les personnes
Liens vers les unités
ISSN
1607-7938
Statut éditorial
Publié
Date de publication
2022-12-02
Volume
26
Numéro
23
Première page
6029
Dernière page/numéro d’article
6054
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Langue
anglais
Résumé
Proglacial margins form when glaciers retreat and create zones with distinctive ecological, geomorphological and hydrological properties in Alpine environments. There is extensive literature on the geomorphology and sediment transport in such areas as well as on glacial hydrology, but there is much less research into the specific hydrological behavior of the landforms that develop after glacier retreat in and close to proglacial margins. Recent reviews have highlighted the presence of groundwater stores even in such rapidly draining environments. Here, we describe the hydrological functioning of different superficial landforms within and around the proglacial margin of the Otemma glacier, a temperate Alpine glacier in the Swiss Alps; we characterize the timing and amount of the transmission of different water sources (rain, snowmelt, ice melt) to the landforms and between them, and we compare the relationship between these processes and the catchment-scale discharge. The latter is based upon a recession-analysis-based framework. In quantifying the relative groundwater storage volumes of different superficial landforms, we show that steep zones only store water on the timescale of days, while flatter areas maintain baseflow on the order of several weeks. These landforms themselves fail to explain the catchment-scale recession patterns; our results point towards the presence of an unidentified storage compartment on the order of 40 mm, which releases water during the cold months. We suggest attributing this missing storage to deeper bedrock flowpaths. Finally, the key insights gained here into the interplay of different landforms as well as the proposed analysis framework are readily transferable to other similar proglacial margins and should contribute to a better understanding of the future hydrogeological behavior of such catchments.
PID Serval
serval:BIB_BF86CFD8775F
Open Access
Oui
Date de création
2022-12-03T13:03:49.403Z
Date de création dans IRIS
2025-05-21T01:17:47Z
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Nom
Muller_etal_HESS.pdf
Version du manuscrit
published
Licence
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Taille
8.43 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
PID Serval
serval:BIB_BF86CFD8775F.P001
URN
urn:nbn:ch:serval-BIB_BF86CFD8775F5
Somme de contrôle
(MD5):8ef1f0de08eb5be81ab5cbea28da75b4