Rock glaciers, Upper Engadin, Switzerland, Version 1

The investigated region is called Upper Engadin and is situated in the Eastern part of the Swiss Alps. The area is characterized by a high situated valley floor with an average altitude of 1700 m asl. This valley has a very smooth slope in the direction from SW to NE and is characterized by the river Inn and some larger lakes (Lake Sils, Lake Silvaplana, Lake Champfer and Lake St. Moritz). At upper most part the valley breaks sharply down to the valley of the Maira river in the Bergell mountains. There were mapped three categories of rock glaciers. 1) 97 active rock glaciers, 2) 47 inactive rock glaciers and 3) 26 fossil or relict rock glaciers. The mapping was performed with infrared aerial photographs taken by the Swiss Federal Office of Cadastral Surveys (Vermessungsdirektion). The scale of the photographs is around 1 to 52000. The data are described in Hoelzle (1989, unpublished). The following parameters of each rock glacier were measured. Front elevation [m asl], source elevation [m asl], length [m], width [m], front exposition, source exposition, and coordinates [Swiss national system]. These data are presented on the CAPS Version 1.0 CD-ROM, June 1998.