Permafrost, Rock, Ice and Snow Monitoring in the Austre Lovén glacier catchment
In the context of a strong focus being put by the international community on cryosphere studies, the follow-up PRISM project is designed to pursue the long-term monitoring of a small high-Arctic glacier catchment (Svalbard) and to revisit former research questions with the most recent tools in the constantly evolving climatic context of the current period.
Fast dynamic processes are under way in the area and monitoring, quantifying and explaining these processes, using both classic and innovative instruments, is at the heart of this project.
The project is structured around 3 main work packages.
The purpose of the first package is to consolidate the Austre Lovén glacier basin as a long-term observatory. Such observatories are scarce in the Arctic and the data they provide are therefore all the more valuable. While the first observations in this basin were conducted in the 1960’s, a renewed effort has been undertaken by our team amounting in 2025 to 18 years worth of data published in the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) database. This work consists in proceeding to standardized protocols for glacier mass balance measurements, including winter mass balance (snow cover), annual mass balance (ablation stakes), and air temperature measurements.
The second package aims to complement the mass balance data with hydrological measurements. Establishing the full water balance of a glacial watershed is very challenging. The Austre Lovénbreen basin was subject to hydrological studies for many years, and now recent instrumental developments such as Radar-based gauging stations and advanced Automated Weather Stations in combination with tools dedicated to recurring measurements (LiDAR, Automated Photo Stations) enables our team to attempt to accurately assess the water balance of Austre Lovénbreen. Even though this is an ambitious goal, once calibrated and validated, the proposed setup will complement the recurrent measurement already in place, and further reinforce the observatory nature of Austre Lovénbreen.
The third package focuses on 2 important research topics that are undergoing significant evolutions in a fast changing climate: snow cover dynamics and morphological evolutions. Investigations of the snowpack come as a complement to the hydrological balance and represent a fundamental element of the hydrological system. Changes in precipitation regimes in the Arctic have, among other consequences, a significant impact on the snowpack. They also modify the volume and regime of meltwater in the basin with strong consequences on the glacial and periglacial environments. It is the geomorphological aspects resulting from these shifts that constitute the second part of this package. Here it is proposed to build upon hydrological monitoring by investigating ‘source-to-sink’ sediment transfers. The aim is to examine the geomorphic evolution and adaptation of periglacial zones in response to glacier retreat.
Together these 3 packages allow for a precise monitoring and a fine understanding of some of the key parameters that influence this Arctic glacier basin everywhere from the basin slopes, to the glacier, on to the moraine, and all the way into the fjord.