Snow and Ice-Related Hazards, Risks, and Disasters

Ramesh Sivanpillai, Senior Research Scientist, Dept of Botany, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA Ramesh Sivanpillai is a Remote Sensing Scientist at the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center (WyGISC) at the University of Wyoming. His research interests include digital processing of satellite and aerial images, data fusion, image enhancement and classification.

Wilfried Haeberli is professor emeritus at the Geography Department, University of Zurich, Switzerland. His research focuses on high mountains, impacts from climate change, glacier and permafrost monitoring, natural hazards and ice-age paleoglaciology. He obtained his PhD in Geography at the University of Basel (1974) and his habilitation in glaciology and geomorphology at ETH Zurich (1985). From 1989 to 1995 he led the Glaciology Section at the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology of ETH Zurich, from 1995 to 2013 he was full professor of Physical Geography at the University of Zurich, from 1986 to 2010 he was the first director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) of IACS/ICSU, UNEP, UNESCO and WMO and from1998 – 2003 he served as a vice president of the International Permafrost Association (IPA). As a member of the Terrestrial Observation Panel for Climate (TOP-C) from 1996 to 2009 he was responsible for the integration of cryosphere components as Essential Climate Variables into the terrestrial part (Global Terrestrial Observing System; GTOS) of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). He has been actively involved in various functions with the second to the fifth IPCC assessments and works as an expert and consultant concerning high-mountain hazards and climate-change impacts in various countries of South America, Asia and Europe

Colin Whiteman was Principal Lecturer in Physical Geography in the School of Environment and Technology at the University of Brighton. He obtained his PhD in Pleistocene Stratigraphy at the University of London (1990). As Course Leader for the BSc. Physical Geography degree at Brighton, he taught a range of associated subjects, introducing the first course on climate change and, in particular, one on Cold Region Hazards. The latter topic was subsequently developed into a student text book, “Cold Regions Hazards and Risks”. He has led student studies in Norway and Iceland and carried out published geomorphological and stratigraphical research in these countries and in Arctic Canada