The ALPHA Team contributed to the “Limnogeology" and “Source-to-Sink Systems as Archives” Sessions at the European Geoscience Union 2026 presenting the following topics:

Debris-laden flows as indicators of Holocene natural hazard variability in alpine regions: First results from Lake Heiterwang (Northern Calcareous Alps, Austria) , Leonie Leitgeb

Increasing debris-laden flow volumes at Plansee (AT): Comparing the lacustrine sedimentary archive with the terrestrial sediment budget from historical aerial imagery, Carolin Kiefer

We had great scientific discussions and look forward to present more ALPHA results next year!

The team of FAU and UIBK, together with Christian Ohlendorf (University of Bremen) carried out another round of fieldwork at Plansee. On the first day the sediment trap was deployed in one of the basins in Plansee, to capture incoming material to the lake. On the second day, the UIBK team successfully retrieved more sediment cores.

Participants: Christoph Mayr, bachelor student Ludwig Barth, Christian Ohlendorf, Jasper Moernaut, master student Niklas Tischler, PhD student Leonie Leitgeb, and helpers from the water rescue (many thanks!).

A team from TUM and UIBK measured seismic refraction and georadar profiles along the Achensee debris fans to investigate their volumes and acquired drone images for digital surface models.

The first lake-based fieldwork of the ALPHA project was successfully conducted at Plansee and Lake Heiterwang. During the campaign, we collected several sediment short cores along with grab samples. The cores will now be analyzed at the University of Innsbruck. 

We started the terrestrial fieldwork for the DFG ALPHA Project (Deciphering Alpine Hazard frequencies by amphibious investigations of Holocene lake inventories) with Electrical Resistivity Tomography over the three debris flow fans at Achensee. 

Our DFG Weave Lead Agency Project kick-off meeting together with our partners from University of Innsbruck, Friedrich-Albert University Erlangen and University of Bern was held on Achensee. By amphibious investigation of landslide deposits in and around Alpine Lakes, we want to answer how alpine hazard magnitudes and frequencies respond nonlinearly to environmental forcing. Lake sediments provide long-term records (in our case 10 000 years) as a sound basis for anticipating Alpine hazard frequencies in the forseeable future under various scenarios of climate change.