earth-surface-science
Earth Surface Science
The group comprises all research units of the Institute of Geography and Social Anthoropology focusing on Physical Geography topics. We currently research on glacier hydrology, water resources, sea level change, plastic litter in coastal environments, hydrology and natural hazards.
The methods used in this group are diverse and range from classic field methods such as Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles, Ground Penetrating Radar, coring, sediment sampling and snow hydrology measurements to Geographical Information Systems and remote sensing methods using satellite imagery and on to theoretical developments in hydrology and numerical modelling of glaciers and river basins.
Most of these topics are anchored within one of NTNU’s strategic research areas, specifically the Ocean and coast, Civil security and Community strategic research areas.
Ongoing research projects
We aim at gaining an in-depth understanding of the interplay between the climate system, glacio-hydrological change, local communities and infrastructure and developing a comprehensive risk assessment scheme for different mountian communities. These aims are reached through a circular process involving numerical modeling, field observations and assessments of community resilience.
Visit our homepage https://www.gotheca.com/
ResilienceS to climate risks: lessons from arctic and pacific communities
Since the 2000's and in a climate change context, 2.3 billion people have been impacted by natural disasters. Faced with complex issues, risk management has evolved to analyze risks in a systemic way, integrating the resilience concept which is now an imperative for territories. For more information, visit our homepage https://www.ntnu.edu/igs/retrace.
The project explores plastic pollution in soils, water and sediments by means of field investigations and laboratory techniques such as spectroscopy and Pyrolyze GC-MS. We especially investigate concentrations, composition, leakage and effects of plastic pollution.
Visit our homepage https://www.ntnu.edu/sustainability/maple
The three-year project responds to the increasing impact of natural disasters on over 2.3 billion people since the beginning of the millennium. It has a particular focus on Arctic and Pacific communities vulnerable to climate risks, specifically, the Marquesan community in French Polynesia, the Sámi and Kven communities in Norway, and the Ahtna people in Alaska. The project aims to address the resilience(s) of communities, in order to develop more inclusive and equitable approaches to developing and implementing resilience strategies.
The project is funded by the Belmont Forum and by the Norwegian Research Council.
The project focuses on rapid changes of the outlet glaciers of the Northern Patagonian Ice Sheet and their interactions with proglacial lakes.
Team members
News
- The project RETRACE - Resiliences to climate risks: lessons from Arctic and Pacific communities is funded by the Belmont Forum.
- The GOTHECA-NOCK team (Pascal Egli, Ronja Lappe, Ursula Enzenhofer) will carry out a field expedition in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan in June 2024. This is a collaboration with our partners in Karakoram International University, Gilgit. Together we investigate hydrological and societal impacts of Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) in the Karakoram region.
Recent publications
- Holthuis, M., Nixon, C. F., Kylander, M. E., van der Bilt, W. G. M., Hong, I., Joyse, K. M., Lakeman, T. R., Martin, J., Peter, M., Holme, S. S., Horton, B. P. (2025): Relative sea-level trends in southern Norway during the last millennium. BOREAS an international journal of Quaternary research. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15023885/0/0
- Twinomuhangi, M. B., Bamutaze,Y., Kabenge, I., Wanyama, J., Kizza, M., Gabiri, G., Egli, P. E. (2025): Analysis of stationary and non-stationary hydrological extremes under a changing environment: A systematic review. Hydro Research, Volume 8, pages 332-350. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hydres.2024.12.007
- Gong, Y., Tomar, S., Rogozhina, I., Basso, S. (2025): Quantifying the hydrological contribution of glaciers in southwestern Norway at the beginning of the 21st century. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies, Science Direct, Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2025.102205
- Abdulahi, M. M. & Egli, P. E. (2024): Landslides triggered by the July 21–22, 2024, heavy rainfall in the Gofa Zone, Southern Ethiopia. Springer Nature Link. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10346-024-02397-4
- Basso, S., Musolff, A. and de Wit, A. H. (2024): More Frequent Runoff and Connected Sources in Headwaters Promote Browning of Northern Freshwaters. Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett. 2025, 12, 51−56. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00939
- Wang, H.J., Merz, R. and Basso, S. (2024), Constructing a geography of heavy-tailed flood distributions: insights from common streamflow dynamics. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, European Geosciences union. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2024-159
- Cyvin, J. B., F. C. Nixon (2024), Plastic litter affected by heat or pressure: A review of current research on remoulded plastic litter, Science of the Total Environment. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.171498
- Basso, S., R. Merz, L. Tarasova, and A. Miniussi (2023), Extreme flooding controlled by stream network organization and flow regime, Nature Geoscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01155-w
- Wu, D., M. Cordova, C. C. Hellevik, J. B. Cyvin, A. Pinto, I. A. Hameed, H. Pedrini, R. da Silva Torres, and A. Fet (2023), The PlastOPol system for marine litter monitoring by citizen scientists, Environmental Modelling & Software. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2023.105784
- Peter, M., J. L. Andersen, F. C. Nixon, B. Etzelmueller, S. Westermann, O. Fredin (2023), Near surface temperatures and potential for frost weathering in blockfields in Norway and Svalbard, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.5528
- Thorsnes, T., S. Chand, V. Bellec, F. C. Nixon, H. Brunstad, A. Lepland, S. M. Aarestad (2023), Gas seeps and fluid flow features in Norwegian waters – distribution and mechanisms, Norwegian Journal of Geology. https://dx.doi.org/10.17850/njg103-2-4
- Hellevik, C. C., and J. B. Cyvin (2023), Plastic pollution: about time to unify research methods and demand systemic changes, Pollution and the Environment. https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2023.1232974
- Martin, J., M. Granberg, J. F. Provencher, M. Liborion, L. Pijogge, K. Magnusson, I. G. Hallanger, M. Bergmann, S. Aliani, A. Gomiero, B. E. Grøsvik, J. Vermaire, S. Primpke, and A. L. Lusher (2023), The power of multi-matrix monitoring in the Pan-Arctic region: plastics in water and sediment, Arctic Science. https://doi.org/10.1139/as-2021-0056
- Tomar, K. S., A. V. Prasad, and S. S. Tomar (2023), Spaceborne SAR Application to Study Ice Flow Variation of Potsdam Glacier and Polar Record Glacier, East Antarctica, Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar Remote Sensing: Techniques and Applications. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003204466-12
- Mushtaq, S., A. Miniussi, R. Merz, L. Tarasova, F. Marra, and S. Basso (2023), Prediction of extraordinarily high floods emerging from heterogeneous flow generation processes, Geophysical Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL105429
- Wang, H.-J., R. Merz, S. Yang, and S. Basso (2023), Inferring heavy tails of flood distributions through hydrograph recession analysis, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-4369-2023
- Tarasova, L., D. Lun, R. Merz, G. Blöschl, S. Basso, M. Bertola, A. Miniussi, O. Rakovec, L. Samaniego, S. Thober, and R. Kumar (2023), Shifts in flood generation processes exacerbate regional flood anomalies in Europe, Communications Earth & Environment. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00714-8
- Miniussi, A., L. Kaule, R. Merz, and S. Basso (2023), Identifying discontinuities of flood frequency curves, Journal of Hydrology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.128989
- Wang, H.-J., R. Merz, S. Yang, L. Tarasova, and S. Basso (2023), Emergence of heavy tails in streamflow distributions: the role of spatial rainfall variability, Advances in Water Resources. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2022.104359
- Martin, J., A. L. Lusher, F. C. Nixon (2022), A review of the use of microplastics in reconstructing dated sedimentary archives, Science of the Total Environment. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150818
- Tomar, S. S., R. Ramsankaran, and J. P. Walker (2022), Spatially varying WIndow based maximum likelihood feature tracking (SWIFT) method for glacier surface velocity estimations, Geocarto International. https://doi.org/10.1080/10106049.2022.2082556
- Nixon, F. C. (2022), Wood, whales, and the water’s edge: three proxies for interpreting past sea-ice conditions on Arctic beaches, Past Global Changes Magazine. https://doi.org/10.22498/pages.30.2.84
- Cyvin, J. B. (2022) Can We to a Greater Extent Involve Citizens in Environmental Research?, Frontiers in Environmental Science. https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2022.874559
- Merz, B., S. Basso, S. Fischer, D. Lun, G. Blöschl, B. Guse, R. Merz, A. Viglione, S. Vorogushyn, E. Macdonald, A. Schumann, and L. Wietzke (2022), Understanding heavy tails of flood peak distributions, Water Resources Research. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR030506
- Mushtaq, S., A. Miniussi, R. Merz, and S. Basso (2022), Reliable estimation of high floods: a method to select the most suitable ordinary distribution in the Metastatistical Extreme Value framework, Advances in Water Resources. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2022.104127
- Merz, R., A. Miniussi, S. Basso, K. J. Petersen, and L. Tarasova (2022), More complex is not necessary better in large-scale hydrological modeling: A model complexity experiment across the contiguous United States, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0284.1
- Yang, S., O. Büttner, R. Kumar, S. Basso, and D. Borchardt (2022), An analytical framework for determining the ecological risks of wastewater discharges in river networks under climate change, Earth’s Future. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EF002601
- Saavedra, F., A. Musolff, J. von Freyberg, R. Merz, S. Basso, and L. Tarasova (2022), Disentangling scatter in long-term concentration–discharge relationships: the role of event types, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-6227-2022
- Cyvin, J. B., H. Ervik, A. A. Kveberg, and C. C. Hellevik (2021), Macroplastic in soil and peat. A case study from the remote islands of Mausund and Froan landscape conservation area, Norway; implications for coastal cleanups and biodiversity, Science of the Total Environment. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.147547
- Egli, P. E., B. Belotti, B. Ouvry, J. Irving, and S. N. Lane (2021), Subglacial channels, climate warming, and increasing frequency of Alpine glacier snout collapse, Geophysical Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL096031
- Egli, P. E., Irving, J., & Lane, S. N. (2021). Characterization of subglacial marginal channels using 3-D analysis of high-density ground-penetrating radar data, Journal of Glaciology. https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2021.26
- Kumari, S., A. Pandit, L. Patel, R. A. A. J. Ramsankaran, P. Sharma, and A. L. Ramanathan (2021), Modelling ice thickness and storage volume of svalbard glaciers monitored through Indian Arctic Programme, Polar Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polar.2021.100741
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