Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Processes
- 2 Regional seismic shaking hazards in mountains
- 3 Volcanic hazards and risks: a geomorphological perspective
- 4 Mountain hazards
- 5 Review and future challenges in snow avalanche risk analysis
- 6 Landslide hazards
- 7 Catastrophic landslides and sedimentary budgets
- 8 Landslides and climatic change
- 9 The hazardousness of high-magnitude floods
- 10 Flood hazards: the context of fluvial geomorphology
- 11 Geomorphology and coastal hazards
- 12 Weathering hazards
- 13 Hazards associated with karst
- 14 Soil erosion
- 15 Desertification and land degradation in arid and semi-arid regions
- 16 Dune migration and encroachment
- Part II Processes and applications of geomorphology to risk assessment and management
- Index
- References
5 - Review and future challenges in snow avalanche risk analysis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Processes
- 2 Regional seismic shaking hazards in mountains
- 3 Volcanic hazards and risks: a geomorphological perspective
- 4 Mountain hazards
- 5 Review and future challenges in snow avalanche risk analysis
- 6 Landslide hazards
- 7 Catastrophic landslides and sedimentary budgets
- 8 Landslides and climatic change
- 9 The hazardousness of high-magnitude floods
- 10 Flood hazards: the context of fluvial geomorphology
- 11 Geomorphology and coastal hazards
- 12 Weathering hazards
- 13 Hazards associated with karst
- 14 Soil erosion
- 15 Desertification and land degradation in arid and semi-arid regions
- 16 Dune migration and encroachment
- Part II Processes and applications of geomorphology to risk assessment and management
- Index
- References
Summary
Background
Snow avalanches pose a major threat to alpine communities because they affect safety in villages and on traffic routes. Therefore, dealing with avalanche danger has a long tradition in Alpine countries. In most countries, avalanches contribute only to a small degree to the overall risk of a country. For Switzerland, for example, avalanche risk represents only 2% of all risks (BABS, 2003).
Snow avalanche formation, geomorphology and land use planning
Snow avalanches are a type of fast-moving mass movement. They can also contain rocks, soil, vegetation or ice. Avalanche size is classified according to its destructive power (McClung and Schaerer, 2006). A medium-sized slab avalanche may involve 10,000 m3 of snow, equivalent to a mass of about 2,000 tons (snow density 200 kg/m3). Avalanche speeds vary between 50 and 200 km/h for large dry snow avalanches, whereas wet slides are denser and slower (20–100 km/h). If the avalanche path is steep, dry snow avalanches generate a powder cloud.
There are different types of snow avalanches (Table 5.1), and in particular two types of release: loose snow avalanches and slab avalanches. Loose snow avalanches start from a point, in a relatively cohesionless surface layer of either dry or wet snow. Initial failure is analogous to the rotational slip of cohesionless sands or soil, but occurs within a small volume (<1 m3) in comparison to much larger initiation volumes in soil slides.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Geomorphological Hazards and Disaster Prevention , pp. 49 - 62Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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