Snow avalanche characterization through seismological methods

Snow avalanches associated risk in mountain areas can be very high. The knowledge of these phenomena is very impor tant in order to mitigate that risk. The avalanche research group at the University of Barcelona has been working with the seismic signals of snow avalanches since 1994 at different sites all around Europe. The availability of more than 50 seismic records of snow avalanches made possible the identification of the specific characteristics of the seismic signals generated by avalanches. Classical seismological techniques frequently used to study earthquakes have been imported to perform the seismic signal characterization. However, the recent studies of the group have been focused in determining the physical parameters that can help in the description of the phenomena. In this case, seismological techniques have been used, in addition of the characterization of the seismic signals to obtain information of the avalanche itself. In this paper an overview of the most successful results in this field are presente