The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research is concerned with the use, development and protection of natural and urban spaces. The focus of our research is on solving problems to do with the responsible use of landscapes and forests and a prudent approach to natural hazards, especially those common in mountainous countries. WSL occupies a leading position internationally in these research areas. We also provide groundwork for sustainable environmental policies in Switzerland.

More information: https://www.wsl.ch/

31 datasets found

  • Forecast avalanche danger level European Alps 2011 - 2015

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This dataset contains the data used in the publication by Techel et al., 2018 Spatial consistency and bias in avalanche forecasts - a case study in the European Alps (Nat Haz...

    Last updated: February 13, 2025

    • CSV
    • ZIP
    • warning-regions
    • european-alps
    • avalanche-forecast
    • danger-level
    • snow
  • Wind crust formation: Microsoft Kinect data

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This data sets contains the Microsoft Kinect data from 15 wind tunnel experiments on wind-packing / wind crust formation. These experiments were performed in the winter 2016/17....

    Last updated: February 13, 2025

    • SERVICE
    • ZIP
    • TXT
    • kinect
    • wind-packing
    • wind-crust
    • wind-tunnel
    • snow
  • A high-resolution snow and hydrometeorological dataset for the Dischma region in Switzerland

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This repository contains data from the alpine Dischma watershed and its surroundings in eastern Switzerland and includes: (a) hourly hydrometeorological data with 100m spatial...

    Last updated: August 22, 2025

    • ZIP
    • inarch
    • modelling
    • hydrology
    • cryosphere
    • dischma
    • snow
  • A numerical solver for heat and mass transport in snow based on FEniCS

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This python code uses the Finite Element library FEniCS (via docker) to solve the one dimensional partial differential equations for heat and mass transfer in snow. The results are...

    Last updated: February 22, 2022

    • ZIP
    • python
    • numerical-model
    • vapor-transport
    • pattern-formation
    • snow
  • Meteorological data used to develop and validate the bias-detecting ensemble (BDE)

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    These data were used to drive and evaluate Jules Investigation Model (JIM) snow simulations. The data provided are the forcing data used for the "deterministic" runs as described...

    Last updated: March 6, 2025

    • TXT
    • ZIP
    • snow-simulation
    • jules-investigation-model
    • jim
    • snow
    • snow-depth
  • Preferential deposition of snow and dust over hills: governing processes and relevant scales

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    Preferential deposition of snow and dust over complex terrain is responsible for a wide range of environmental processes, and accounts for a significant source of uncertainty in...

    Last updated: June 3, 2024

    • ZIP
    • turbulence
    • deposition
    • particles
    • atmosphere
    • hill
    • dust
    • snow
  • How do stability corrections perform in the stable boundary layer over snow?

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    We used five different atmospheric turbulence datasets from four test sites, with these sites showing differences in their topographical characteristics. We chose one typical...

    Last updated: February 13, 2025

    • ZIP
    • stable-boundary-layer
    • snow
    • atmospheric-turbulence
    • atmosphere
    • turbulent-sensible-heat-fluxes
  • Selected wet snow avalanche activity data Davos, Switzerland (2011-2014)

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    Polygons of wet snow avalanches in the Davos area, as documented by the Swiss avalanche warning service. The georeferenced outlines of the avalanches contain both the release as...

    Last updated: February 13, 2025

    • ZIP
    • avalanches
    • snow
    • observations
    • alps
    • shapefile
  • Experiments on stable water isotopes, snow metamorphism, and advection

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    Stable water isotopes (δ18O) obtained from snow and ice samples of polar regions are used to reconstruct past climate variability, but heat and mass transport processes can affect...

    Last updated: February 13, 2025

    • ZIP
    • TXT
    • snow
    • 18o
    • metamorphism
    • advection
    • stable-water-isotope
  • Satellite avalanche mapping validation data

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    Validation points, validation area, ground truth coverage, SPOT 6 avalanche outlines, Sentinel-1 avalanche outlines, Sentinel-2 avalanche outlines, Davos avalanche mapping...

    Last updated: July 31, 2025

    • ZIP
    • avalanche
    • avalanche-hazard-mapping
    • snow
    • validation
    • satellite
  • Saltation of cohesive granular materials

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    The wind-driven saltation of sand and snow shapes dunes and ripples, generates dust emission, and erodes the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet. Here, we use a model based on the...

    Last updated: May 31, 2022

    • ZIP
    • saltation
    • sediment
    • sand
    • cohesion
    • snow
    • wind
  • Snow on Antarctic Sea Ice - McMurdo Sound 2022

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    Data of snow and sea ice in the McMurdo Sound, October-December 2022. The data was collected as part of the New Zealand Marsden Fund Research Grant 21-VUW-103 "Can Snow Change the...

    Last updated: April 10, 2025

    • ZIP
    • drone-data
    • snow
    • spatial-variability
    • sea-ice
    • antarctica
    • polar
  • Latent Heat Flux over Snow

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This dataset contains three case studies where are compared the latent heat flux calculated using the Eddy Covariance (EC) method, the Monin-Obukhov Similarity Theory (MOST) and...

    Last updated: February 25, 2025

    • SERVICE
    • ZIP
    • meteo-station
    • meteo
    • central-asia
    • snow
    • swiss-alps
    • meta
  • Validating and improving the critical crack length in SNOWPACK

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    To validate the critical crack length as implemented in the snow cover model SNOWPACK, PST experiments were conducted for three winter seasons (2015-2017) at two field site above...

    Last updated: October 29, 2020

    • ZIP
    • TXT
    • snowpack
    • snow
    • avalanche
    • avalanche-forecast
    • snow-stability-evaluation
  • Snow depth mapping by lidar station Braemabuel

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    We developed a monitoring system using low-cost lidar (Livox Avia) and optical sensors, to measure snow depth variations in an avalanche release area at a high spatiotemporal scale...

    Last updated: May 16, 2025

    • ZIP
    • wind-drifted-snow
    • avalanche
    • low-cost
    • snow
    • monitoring
    • lidar
  • Snow On Antarctic Sea Ice - McMurdoSound 2022 - UAV Retrievals of Snow Topography and Snow Surface Temperature

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This dataset accompanies the publication "How Flat is Flat? Investigating the spatial variability of snow surface temperature and roughness on landfast sea ice using UAVs in...

    Last updated: April 5, 2025

    • ZIP
    • snow-temperature
    • irra
    • sea-ice
    • antarctica
    • snow-roughness
    • drone
    • uav
    • snow
  • 21st century projections of dry- and wet-snow avalanche activity

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This data set includes 21st century projections of dry- and wet-snow avalanche activity for seven sites in the Swiss Alps as well as the downscaled climate scenarios and SNOWPACK...

    Last updated: March 4, 2025

    • ZIP
    • TXT
    • snow-instability
    • wet-snow-avalanche
    • climate-projections
    • dry-snow-avalanche
    • snow
    • snow-stratigraphy
    • climate-change
    • avalanche
  • Dataset on PV Production in Snow Covered Mountains

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    Overview The SUNWELL Modelling Environment is a combination of data and code that models electricity production from satellite-derived irradiance data and other spatial data sets...

    Last updated: July 3, 2024

    • XLS
    • ZIP
    • reflection
    • irradiance
    • albedo
    • photovoltaic
    • mountain
    • snow
    • energy
  • Automatic detection of avalanches

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This dataset contains the results obtained by an automatic classification using hidden Markov models of a continuous seismic dataset. To avoid long computational times, we reduced...

    Last updated: February 13, 2025

    • ZIP
    • avalanche-activity
    • seismic
    • snow
    • monitoring
    • hidden-markov-model
  • Capillary rise rise experiments in snow using neutron radiography

    EnviDat: the Environmental Data Portal
    Education, culture and sport

    This dataset consists of data related to capillary rise experiments performed with neutron radiography. There are 4 videos of capillary rise experiments as well as the files used...

    Last updated: March 4, 2025

    • TXT
    • ZIP
    • pore-water
    • snow
    • measurements
    • soil
    • water
    • transport