What is it about?
The paper summarizes the contributions to avalanche dynamics made in the papers collected in the Special Issue "Snow Avalanche Dynamics" of Goesciences. It puts them into perspective against the key open scientific and practical questions in this field.
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Why is it important?
Snow avalanche research is a small field, actively pursued only in a few countries. yet, it can make significant contributions to the study of other natural hazards like shallow landslides, debris flows, rock avalanches and pyroclastic flows because full-scale experiments on snow avalanches are—relatively speaking—easy, safe and cheap because the pressures involved are considerably smaller than in other types of gravity mass flows (GMFs). For this reason, experiments have provided insight at the level of the fundamental physical processes that shed new light on similar flow patterns in other types of GMFs
Perspectives
There are still many fascinating scientific questions surrounding the movement of avalanches. Chief among them are the mechanisms that drive transitions between different flow regimes—dense granular flow, collisional-inertial flow with greatly reduced density, and turbulent suspension flow—and govern entrainment of the overflowed snow cover and gradual deposition of avalanching snow. While depth-averaged dynamical models will continue to be a cornerstone in practical applications like hazard mapping, 3D simulations with advanced numerical techniques will contribute greatly to the understanding and inform the development of practical models. As the dynamical models are improved, the main uncertainties in avalanche hazard mapping will be connected to the release: the release probability and the size of the release area have a strong influence on hazard zones, where both the probability and the intensity of events should be taken into account.
Dieter Issler
Norwegian Geotechnical Institute
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Perspectives on Snow Avalanche Dynamics Research, Geosciences, January 2021, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/geosciences11020057.
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