Glacier surface analysis Airborne Laser Scanning for monitoring

iii Glaciers are interesting phenomena to scientists, mountaineers and tourists. Often, glaciers are important for the local economy, power generation and water supply. The fluctuations of glaciers appear to be good indicators for climate change. Apart for that, glaciers are identified as one of the potential sources for natural hazards in the Alps. For these reasons a great interest is shown in monitoring glaciers. Especially detecting crevasses, these are cracks in the ice surface, is important because they are dangerous features when travelling over a glacier. With Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) it is possible to acquire high resolution elevation data of glaciers. In this thesis a method is presented for the automatic delineation of the glacier surface and crevasse reconstruction. In an elevation model the glacier surface is often characterised by its smoothness compared to the surrounding bedrock. Additionally, glaciers are connected areas and their size is restricted by hydrological constraints. This information can be used in a classification of the elevation model in glacier and non-glacier surface. The smoothness criterion is the most important one and ca