Glacial and periglacial environments are highly sensitive to climatic changes.
Processes of cryosphere degradation may strongly impact human activities and
infrastructures, and need to be monitored for improved understanding and
mitigation/adaptation. Studying glacial and periglacial environments using traditional
techniques may be difficult or not feasible, but new remote sensing techniques like
terrestrial and aerial laser scanner opened new possibilities for cryospheric studies.
This work presents an application of the terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) for monitoring
the current rapid changes occurring on the Montasio Occidentale glacier (Eastern
Italian alps), which is representative of low-altitude, avalanche-fed and debris-covered
glaciers. These glaciers are quite common in the Alps but their reaction to climate
changes is still poorly known. The mass balance, surface velocity fields, debris cover
dynamics and effects of meteorological extremes were investigated by repeat highresolution
TLS scanning from September 2010 to October 2012. The results were
encouraging and shed light on the peculiar response of this glacier to climatic changes,
on its current dynamics and on the feedback played by the debris cover, which is
critical for its preservation. The rapid transformations in act, combined with the
unstable ice mass, large amount of loose debris and channeled rainfalls, make the
investigated site a potential area for the formation of large debris flows, as shown by
field evidences and documented by the recent literature.
