Creative outreach for the Kaunertal concept case

The PHUSICOS Kaunertal team presented work on biogeomorphology research in the glacier foreland of the Gepatschferner in Kaunertal Valley Austria at the sixth edition of the Vienna Science Festival which took place from 9 to 11 September.

Once again, this year’s event proved a roaring success with around 10,000 enthusiastic visitors. These researchers of tomorrow experienced science up close and discovered the professional fields of the future at 30 stations and a variety of new workshops. The 2022 edition of this popular hands-on event was staged at Vienna City Hall. Vienna Business Agency teamed up with the city’s businesses, universities and universities of applied sciences at the free event to enable visitors to get to grips with various topics.

The PHUSICOS Kaunertal team presented the importance of Nature Based Solutions to reduce risk of extreme weather events in mountain landscapes. In particular, the glacier is retreating, exposing the slopes which increases their susceptibility to increased erosion.

Ecosystem development in the glacier foreland was shown with a LEGO model to explain how geoscientists collect data on natural processes in the field and explained how this knowledge is used to develop and implement Nature Based Solutions. In a hands-on portion, visitors were able to simulate the effect of slope stabilization with vegetation and could help to apply remote sensing techniques to create a 3D point cloud of the LEGO model.

A link to the a time lapse animation of the retreating glacier and the LEGO model can be found in Stefan Haselberger’s twitter page.

News item prepared by
Stefan Haselberger, UNIVIE – University of Vienna, stefan.haselberger@univie.ac.at