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What is the context of this research?

While it is clear that climate change is significantly impacting the amount and timing of snowfall, little is known about its impact on avalanche occurrence. Avalanches are dangerous natural phenomena to the winter sport industry, and therefore there is a need to understand how climate change might impact them in the future. Virtually nothing is known about historic snow-avalanche activity in remote alpine systems in the US. Many high-elevation small lakes formed at the end of the last ice age (16000 years ago) and since then they have been accumulating and preserving sediment from the surrounding environment as a historical timeline. By coring the lakes and bringing up the sediments, I can examine the layers and get a snapshot of what the environment looked like thousands of years ago.

What is the significance of this project?

With the increasing impacts of climate change in mountainous regions, and limited information on how climate change will impact avalanches, there is clearly a significant gap in this area of climate change research. The proposed project will provide information on the frequency of avalanche events during the past 4000 years and the record will be compared with paleoclimate records from the region to assess climate conditions that are suitable or unsuitable for avalanches. The data will allow managers to make more informed plans when considering future climate projections, and better prepare mountainous communities, infrastructure, and the environment for the likely future impacts of avalanches.

What are the goals of the project?

The goals of this project include determining how avalanches are recorded in lake sediments, determining the frequency of events in central Colorado, and comparing the avalanche record with paleoclimate to determine conditions that influence avalanche activity. I will use a GIS to locate other suitable lakes using site data from our existing lake-avalanche record in Colorado. The goal is to provide a regional reconstruction from multiple records. We will be conducting measurements (particle size, magnetic signatures, geochemistry) on the sediments to distinguish an avalanche from other disturbance events. I plan to develop the first long-term avalanche history for the US. The results will be presented at conferences, published, and made available to interested stakeholders.