Abstract
Abstract. Climate change is already affecting the entire world, with extreme weather conditions such as drought, heat waves, heavy rain, floods and landslides becoming more frequent, including Europe. In according to Paris agreement and relative European announcement of Carbon neutrality (by 2050), the saving of water and energy supplies is a fundamental aspect in the management of resources in production, sports, hospitality facilities and so on. Some methodologies for the optimization of the consumption of natural resources are required. This article describes an activity aimed at measuring, monitoring and analysing the thickness of the snowpack on the ski slopes during the winter season to permit a sustainable approach of snowmaking in alpine ski areas . The authors propose a methodology based on the integration of multitemporal surface (ground/snow) survey by Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) and low cost GNSS receivers mounted on snow groomers for a RTK (Real Time Kinematic) solution. To obtain a complete snow surface digital models with poor detailed images on ski slopes, some pre-processing techniques have been analysed to locally improve contrast and details with a local high pass filtering. The methodology has been employed in two study areas (Limone Piemonte, Prato Nevoso) located in the province of Cuneo, in the southern alpine area of Piedmont.
Highlights
Energy efficiency and the containment of climate-changing gas emissions are a priority for tourist facilities (Dawson and Scott, 2013)
Ski resorts have increasingly had to exploit the production of artificial snow, mainly to limit the effects that the variability of snow conditions may have on the activities of ski resorts; artificial snowmaking can be considered a form of adaptation to climate change (Steiger et al, 2017)
One of the major energy consumption items of the ski resorts concerns the manufacture of artificial snow, a requirement which is growing due to climate change and which determines a strong environmental pressure both locally, with the need to create special reservoirs at high altitude or water withdrawals during the winter, both globally, with strong emissions of climate-changing gases linked to the production of
Summary
Energy efficiency and the containment of climate-changing gas emissions are a priority for tourist facilities (Dawson and Scott, 2013). In the alpine environment, the consumption for heating and the production of domestic hot water represent an important cost item for structures linked to ski tourism, such as hotels, catering establishments, ticket offices, changing rooms and shops. These costs are due, in many cases, to the absence of methane that forces the structures to resort to more expensive solutions, such as diesel and GPL. The production of artificial snow is becoming a big problem in relation to climate change This is because it is increasingly difficult to produce it (due to the increase in temperatures) and its production takes on high costs (Scott et al, 2019). One of the major energy consumption items of the ski resorts concerns the manufacture of artificial snow, a requirement which is growing due to climate change and which determines a strong environmental pressure both locally, with the need to create special reservoirs at high altitude or water withdrawals during the winter (which, in our latitudes represents the second lean season after the summer), both globally, with strong emissions of climate-changing gases linked to the production of
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