Artifical rainfall experiment on a glacial moraine

The photo shows an artificial rainfall experiment on a 5000 year old moraine in the proglacial area of the Griessfirn in the Swiss Alps. The experiment was conducted within the HILLSCAPE project, which investigates the coevolution of vegetation, soil and hydrology during the first 10000 years of landscape evolution. Rainfall experiments were conducted with different intensities on moraines of different age (30 - 10000 years of age), to determine how infiltration rates, runoff responses, sediment transport and soil erosion evolve in the first millennia of hillslope development.