Linking Past Erosion Processes with Weather Dynamics in the Habach Valley, Hohe Tauern, Austria

Enhanced sediment export from high-alpine mountain catchments strongly affects fluvial systems and reinforces the risk of damage to valleys downstream. Changes in precipitation regimes induced by climate change are expected to modify geomorphological activity, erosion processes, and sediment transfer, potentially leading to increased sediment fluxes in alpine rivers. Despite increasing attention to climate-driven geomorphic change, a detailed understanding of sediment transport processes and their response to variations in meteorological forcing remains limited.

This study aims to improve the understanding of recent and historic sediment dynamics in a high-alpine catchment, the Habach Valley, located in the Hohe Tauern National Park (Austria), by integrating topographic change analyses with information on historic meteorological conditions.

We calculate multi-temporal DEM of Difference (DoD) for the time span 1953 – 2023 to detect hotspots of frequent sediment redistribution and quantify erosion volumes. Complemented by information from historical hazard archives, we further evaluate the SPARTACUS precipitation dataset to reconstruct meteorological conditions and link formative extreme events to sediment mobilization and redistribution within the catchment.

First results reveal persistent hotspots of sediment mobilization and redistribution in the observed period, predominantly located within the riverbed and depositional landforms on the slopes and within the cirques. The detected surface changes are mainly related to gravitational and fluvial processes and redistribution along the sediment cascade.