Terrestrial laser scanning to deliver high-resolution topography of the upper Tarfala valley, arctic Sweden

Abstract

Alpine valleys are experiencing rapidly changing physical, biological and geochemical processes as glacier masses diminish, snowfall patterns change and consequently as hillslopes and valley-floor landforms and sediments adjust. Measurement and understanding of these processes on a valley, landform and surface scale requires topographic data with sufficient spatial coverage and spatial resolution to resolve sources, fluxes and storages of sediment. Most ideally such topographic data will be of a resolution sufficient to resolve important spatial heterogeneity in land cover, topography and surface texture, for example. This study presents the first high-resolution (1 m grid cell size) and freely available topography for the upper part of the Tarfala valley, arctic Sweden. The topography was obtained using terrestrial laser scanning and a bespoke workflow is presented to most efficiently cover a 9.3 km² area. The unprecedented spatial resolution of this topography, which is 15 times greater than that previously available, reveals a suite of alpine landforms. These landforms span multiple glacier forefields, a variety of bedrock surfaces, various hillslopes and types of mass movement, and valley floor glacial, fluvial and periglacial sediments, for example. Primary and second-order derivatives of this elevation data, and vertical transects are given and will assist future classification of landforms and thus assist future targeted field campaigns. Overall, this study presents (1) baseline data from which future re-surveys will enable quantitative analysis of a dynamic landscape, and (2) an efficient workflow that is readily transferable to any scientific study at any other site. Both of these project outputs will find widespread usage in future alpine studies.

Keywords:

• terrestrial laser scanner
• light detection and ranging
• Storglaciären
• arctic
• alpine
• geomorphology

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Corrigendum

Acknowledgements

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme [FP7/2007-2013] under grant agreement no. 262693 [INTERACT]. We thank Kallax Flyg for their excellent logistics assistance. We thank Gunhild Rosqvist and Torbjörn Karlin and all the summer 2014 Tarfala staff for their help and interest in this project. Two reviewers and the Editor are thanked for their supportive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

This article was originally published with an error in the hyperlinks to the authors' research data. This version has been corrected. Please see Corrigendum (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/11035897.2015.1078571)