Alpine glaciers retreat and high-altitude mountain huts: a water supply risk analysis

Climate change in the Alps is associated to several impacts, suh as the evolution of high-altitude environments and glaciers retreat. Some studies highlight the complex connections between water availability, natural hazard, tourism perception and mountain huts adaptation: a comprehensive understanding of climate-related impacts is the first step for drafting future scenarios. In this thesis, a database is built considering high-altitude italian alpine huts which offer freshwater access to visitors, collecting main features and mapping their location. Then the alpine glaciers position and retreat data are analyzed, producing a map to confront the glaciers retreat with the huts positions, identifying cases potentially exposed to climate impact. Finally, a risk analysis related to water supply is performed, introducing an indicator that takes into account the distance to the glaciers, the ice loss rate and the dimension of the huts. Results indicate that some huts are exposed to a maximum risk and interviews have been performed with some of them, expanding the complexity of water supply evaluation. The management staff confirmed the climatic variations of the high-mountain environment and the adoption of some adaptation strategies, although disagreeing on the level of risk that has been computed. The indicator points, in fact, more to a long-term risk than to a short-term one, mostly because in the short term a (temporary) increase in water availability is enabled by glacier melting.