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January 2018 was an unusually warm and wet month across the Western Alps, with widespread landslides at low elevations and massive snowfall higher up. According to a comment published in Nature Geoscience, this extreme month yields lessons for how mountain communities can prepare for a warmer future. The weather of January 2018 was unusual - at the upper extreme of the historical distribution of storminess, temperature and precipitation measurements in the Western Alps – and broke many weather records. Not only was January 2018 unprecedentedly warm, but it was also extremely wet with unusual snowfall at higher elevations. As regional climate models predict substantial warming and, to a lesser extent, increased precipitation across the European Alps, the authors argue that the extreme weather conditions and associate mass wasting observed during January 2018 could yield valuable insights into typical winter conditions to be expected by the end of the 21st century.
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Water security is key to achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, increasingly the world is facing water shortages, and an estimated four billion people do not have sufficient access to safe and reliable water. Forests influence water resources in multiple ways, and at multiple levels. Whereas the interplay between forests and climate is regularly considered in decision-making, that between water and forests remains under-represented. Today, the fact that the world has mobilised around the seventeen SDGs, all of which have a connection to water, provides a crucial argument for paying more attention to the forest-water link. A link that remained under-represented until today.
Today, the 10th of July 2018, the IUFRO (Int. Union of forest research organizations) launshed a newly published report entitled “Forest and Water on a Changing Planet: Vulnerability, Adaptation and Governance Opportunities. This constitutes the most comprehensive systematic scientific syntheses on the interactions between forests and water on the global level to date. Presenting the results of the sixth global scientific assessment undertaken in the framework of Global Forest expert panels (GFEP), the report provides a structured synthesis on the state of the knowledge on the forest-water relationship.
More than 50 scientists from 20 countries contributed to this major assessment of the climate-forests-water-people link, contextually shaped by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This assessment report and the accompanying policy brief, provide an authoritative source of information for policymakers and stakeholders, to support effective implementation of the forest-water policies.
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The audience of the Norwegian Broadcasting chose the stretch between Bergen and Voss of the E16 highway, which currently serves as the main highway connecting the West Coast to eastern Norway and the highly populated Oslo area, as Norway's worst road. This is not only due to the more than 40 traffic casualties and several hundred injured, but also to repeated closures after landslides and rockfall.
Considering the traffic volume of about 5,000 cars a day, the need for action along the road is given, since frequent rockfalls and landslides are a source of insecurity for travelers and for freight transport. The Norwegian Road Administration has identified a first set of hazard reduction measures for about 100 million NOK. A completely new road with long tunnels connecting Bergen and Voss would cost 33 billion NOK according to the Ministry of Transport and Communications.
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A debris flow originated from a wet avalanche in South Tyrol (Italian Alps) on January the 9th, 2018, early in the morning, on a North facing slope. The mass movement was triggered by a large front of wet snow which started sliding on a frozen soil (meadow), where a layer of melting water acted as lubricant. The frozen soil has a low hydraulic conductivity that did not allow the water from snowmelt to infiltrate, therefore the snowmelt flowed as surface runoff between the base of the snow layer and the meadow covered slope surface. The surface runoff had also been fed by intense rainfall the night before. Due to abormal high temperatures (far above the average), the snowpack was extremely wet.
An abrupt change in slope and the availability of lose material turned the process into a debris flow, which entrained trees and boulders along the way, increasing its size. In certain sections the sliding mass eroded the soil layer up to the bedrock. The moving mass went all the way down to the valley floor. Clear signs of high force impacts were observed (deep tree scars). The deposition area was mainly concentrated at the toe of the slope. This required urgent mitigation measures to mitigate the risk for the infrastructures running through the valley.
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Extending over more than 113,000 hectares, the Thomas fire, burning in December 2017, stripped away vegetation and altered the condition of the soil. By removing the above-ground canopy of plants and decreasing water infiltration rates, the fire decreased rainfall thresholds necessary to mobilize large volumes of sediment. Even though the fire was not completely extinguished before the onset of winter rains on 8-9 January, 2018, thousands of people were under evacuation orders as the rainfall fell on vulnerable watersheds. Measured rain intensities were as high as 144 mm/hr. The resulting debris flows and floods (see illustrative videos here) transported ash, mud, boulders, and trees, over 5 m deep at speeds of 20 km/hr through alluvial fans at the base of the mountains, killing at least 20 people and damaging hundreds of homes, vehicles, and infrastructure. The U.S. Geological Survey assessed the burned areas to determine flash flood, mudslide and debris flow hazards. The comparison of images before and after the events published by the BBC are impressive
