Abstract ID: 3.11810 | Accepted as Talk | Poster | TBA | TBA

During summer 1945, the US Army Airforce used fighter planes adapted for then state-of-the-art photogrammetry to capture aerial imagery for most of Europe under the project ‘Casey Jones’. In the Austrian Alps this was done in August 1945, coinciding with the timing of minimal seasonal snow coverage. While the imagery of other countries has been processed already, the one from the Austrian Alps remains undigitized, waiting in archives to be unveiled. Within the presented project we aim at processing the historical imagery for the Austrian Alps applying modern georeferencing techniques and providing both imagery and DEMs for the public. With this dataset we aim at refining our understanding of post-little ice age (LIA) glacier changes comparing the derived glacier extent from 1945 with a series of glacier inventories that exist for Austria (LIA, 1969, 1998, 2006) and further archival information. Rates of area and volume change will be assessed, and spatial modelling used to determine performance on a regional scale. Further topics such as snow distribution, river network, infrastructural changes and tree-line evolution can lead to a wider application of the dataset. In this contribution we will present the current challenges and future perspectives of this recently launched project.