Droughts and heat waves are expected to become more frequent in Switzerland due to climate change. Droughts have major impacts on water resources, public health, ecosystems and consequently the economy. However, relevant information about relevant economic and societal impacts and knowledge about adequate coping strategies are still lacking.

New snow remains powdery during prolonged time during cold weather. New experiments using micro-tomography and a movie made of the images show the changes explaining for he first time, why new snow is not always „aging“ and becoming more dense.

The dispersal of several insect species occurring in fragmented habitats in the agricultural Swiss plateau will be investigated by using genetic methods and mark-recapture studies.

Last winter we did an opinion survey on the avalanche bulletin. The results show that most of the respondents assumed the bulletin to be helpful or even very helpful in their decision making about avalanche danger.

The changing climate affects water resources and natural hazards in the mountainous regions of Switzerland. In this project we will study how sediment transport and fish environments in alpine streams change over the next 40 years to guide the development of ecologically sound flood risk mitigation.

Trees respond to its environment in various ways. Some of the responses to e.g. the microclimate can be detected with ecophysiological methods like dendrometers, sap flow sensors, ultrasonic acoustic emission detectors and some others. The project 'trees' led by the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (ICST) links the ecophysiological records to an audible output. We let the trees sing in the way that we turn physiological responses into music. The main focus is on ultrasonic acoustic emisions from tree stems, recognized as a sound with a physiological origin.

Differing from standard rockfall barriers, rockfall attenuator systems intercept a rockfall trajectory guiding it under a tail drape, its kinetic energy is then dissipated through net deformations and interaction with the slope. Rockfall can then be contained at the base of slope avoiding maintenance and clean out costs commonly associated with standard rockfall barriers.

Investigating the spatial and temporal variability of the alpine snowpace is vital for the assessment of avalanche danger as well as the calculation of hydrological resources in an alpine watershed. This variability of the snowpack is governed by snow drift through wind and by the localised energy balance of the snow surface. SLF use the Wannengrat fieldsite to measure these drift parameters and then use them to develop and verify the numerical drift model in the ALPINE3D surface process model

This project involves a Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) and soil warming experiment located in a natural treeline environment near Davos, Switzerland (Stillberg, 2200 m a.s.l.)