Seasonal freeze-thaw cycles and permafrost degradation on Mt. Zugspitze
(German/Austrian Alps) revealed by single-station seismic monitoring
Abstract
Thawing of mountain permafrost in response to rising temperatures
degrades the stability of rock walls and thereby affects infrastructure
integrity in Alpine terrain. In this study, we use 15 years of passive
seismic data from a single station deployed near a known permafrost body
on Mt. Zugspitze (Germany), to monitor freeze-thaw processes. The
recordings reveal a persistent cultural seismic noise source, which we
utilize to compute single-station cross-correlations and extract
relative seismic velocity changes. We find that parts of the
cross-correlations show seasonal velocity variations (∼3% peak-to-peak
amplitude) and a long-term velocity decrease (∼0.1%/yr). Comparison
with meteorological data and a previous electrical resistivity
tomography study suggests that these velocity changes are caused by
active-layer freeze-thaw cycles and by permafrost degradation,
respectively. The results demonstrate the potential of passive
seismology for permafrost monitoring and suggest that denser
instrumentation will provide detailed spatio-temporal insights on
permafrost dynamics in future studies.