Pascal Emanuel Egli
About
Pascal Egli has a PhD in Geography from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland ("ice-marginal subglacial channels and their relationship to the rapid retreat of temperate Alpine glaciers", 2022), and a Master degree from ETH Zurich (2014), on the topic of Large Eddy Simulations for urban canopies. He has work experience in natural hazards engineering, including hydraulic modelling in 1D and 2D. Pascal has done glaciology fieldwork on several Alpine glaciers in the Swiss Alps, on two glaciers in Lyngen Alps as well as in the Nepal Himalayas, using methods such as Ground Penetrating Radar, UAV, tracer experiments and dGPS.
Research
I am currently implied in two research projects.
(1) I am a contributor to the GOTHECA project. GOTHECA focuses on glacier impacts on hydrological catchments in Europe, Central Asia and South America. The objective is to gain a better understanding of glacier hydrology and future water resources, as well as of the hydrological dangers posed by GLOFS. I am responsible for the fieldwork component of GOTHECA, and I am contributing to writing publications.
(2) My own research project is a continuation of my PhD research and it focuses on glacier collapse features. Collapse features occur close to the snout of temperate alpine glaciers due to the internal erosion and melt-out of subglacial channels. Now the objective is to better understand the processes and to obtain a more systematic assessment of the spatial distribution of collapse features.
Reference:
Egli, P. E., Belotti, B., Ouvry, B., Irving, J., & Lane, S. N. (2021). Subglacial channels, climate
warming, and increasing frequency of Alpine glacier snout collapse. Geophysical Research Letters,
e2021GL096031.
Publications
Egli, P. E., Belotti, B., Ouvry, B., Irving, J., & Lane, S. N. (2021). Subglacial channels, climate
warming, and increasing frequency of Alpine glacier snout collapse. Geophysical Research Letters,
e2021GL096031.
Egli, P. E., Irving, J., & Lane, S. N. (2021). Characterization of subglacial marginal channels using 3-
D analysis of high-density ground-penetrating radar data. Journal of Glaciology, 1-14.
Giometto, M. G., Christen, A., Egli, P. E., Schmid, M. F., Tooke, R. T., Coops, N. C., & Parlange, M.
B. (2017). Effects of trees on mean wind, turbulence and momentum exchange within and above a
real urban environment. Advances in Water Resources, 106, 154-168.
Ayala, A., Pellicciotti, F., MacDonell, S., McPhee, J., Vivero, S., Campos, C., & Egli, P. (2016).
Modelling the hydrological response of debris‐free and debris‐covered glaciers to present climatic
conditions in the semiarid Andes of central Chile. Hydrological Processes, 30(22), 4036-4058.
Egli, P., Ayala, A., Buri, P., & Pellicciotti, F. (2016, April). An improved method to compute supra
glacial debris thickness using thermal satellite images together with an Energy Balance Model in the
Nepal Himalayas. In EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts (pp. EPSC2016-15584).
(conference poster)
Egli, P., Mankoff, K., Mettra, F., & Lane, S. (2017, April). Determination of sub-daily glacier uplift and
horizontal flow velocity with time-lapse images using ImGRAFT. In EGU General Assembly
Conference Abstracts (p. 6095). (conference poster)
Teaching
Courses
- GEOG2020 - Geophysical and biological natural hazards
- GEOG3530 - Special topics in natural hazards
- GEOG2012 - Field and Laboratory Methods in Physical Geography
- GEOG1014 - Earth's Natural Environment
- GEOG3008 - Geography in Practice - Field and Research Design
- GEOG3527 - GIS Tools for Climate Change Studies
GEOG2020 - Geophysical and biological natural hazards (spring 2023)
GEOG2012 - Field methods in geomorphology (autumn 2023)
Earlier courses:
Photogrammetry (UNIL, 2019-2022)
Methods in geomorphology field course (UNIL, 2017-2022)
River hydraulics course (UNIL, 2017-2022)
Seminar on reading, assessment & discussion of scientific articles (UNIL, 2016-2018)
Supervision
Supervision of Master’s and Bachelor’s theses
● “The history of retreat of Glacier d’Otemma as reconstructed from historical aerial
imagery”, Bsc thesis Céline Cardot, 2017
● “Mapping the glacier bed and potential locations of subglacial channels using densely
spaced GPR surveys at Glacier d’Otemma”, Msc thesis Martino Sala, 2018
c
● “Quantification of ablation and ice dynamics of a patagonian glacier using SfM-MVS
photogrammetry based on drone imagery”, Msc thesis Adeline Frossard, 2018
● “Quantification of ice dynamics at Glacier d’Otemma using dGPS measurements,
ground-based LiDAR measurements and timelapse photography”, Bsc thesis Boris
Ouvry, 2018
● “Quantification of melt and ice dynamics at Glacier d’Otemma using repeated high-
resolution UAV-based SfM-MVS photogrammetry”, Bsc thesis Bruno Belotti, 2019.