Characterizing and monitoring Earth surface processes often requires the development of challenging scientific approaches leading to the rise of innovative techniques. From the highest mountains to the deepest oceans, passive to active monitoring techniques are in constant progress and push further terra incognita boundaries. In particular, seismic techniques are becoming widely used to detect and quantitatively characterise a wide variety of natural processes occurring at the Earth’s surface. These processes include mass movements such as landslides, rock falls, debris flows and lahars; glacial phenomena such as icequakes, glacier calving/serac falls, glacier melt and supra- to sub-glacial hydrology; snow avalanches; water storage and water dynamics phenomena such as water table changes, river flow turbulence and fluvial sediment transport. Where other methods often provide limited spatial and temporal coverage, seismic observations allow recovering sequences of events with high temporal resolution and over large areas. In addition to seismic techniques, recent advances in other in-situ geophysical instrumentation (e.g. Doppler radar, sub bottom profilers, etc.) or remote sensing techniques (e.g. inSAR, unmanned aerial systems, unmanned maritime systems, etc.) have made remote monitoring and data acquisition a reality. These novel techniques represent more affordable, practical solutions for the collection of spatial and temporal data sets in challenging environments.
These observational capabilities allow establishing connections with meteorological drivers, and give unprecedented insights on the underlying physics of the various Earth’s surface processes as well as on their interactions (chains of events). These capabilities are also of first interest for real time hazards monitoring and early warning purposes.
This session aims to bring together research on seismic methods as well as holistic, novel and/or in-development monitoring solutions to study Earth surface dynamics, particularly in challenging and hostile areas. We welcome contributions from a broad range of disciplines (including geomorphology, cryospheric sciences, seismology, natural hazards, volcanology, soil system sciences and hydrology) and applications (from landslides, snow avalanches, glaciers, cave systems, marine/lake and submarine systems, to volcano and permafrost monitoring).

Solicited presenter: Zack Spica - University of Michigan (USA)