Abstract
Mass transportation in cold mountain areas takes place at a rather steady rate in the form of small-scale rockfalls, snow avalanches, glacier movement, permafrost creep, solifluction and river flow, whereas large-scale rockfalls, land- slides, floods and debris flows reflect more rarely occurring extreme events (Luckmann & Rowley, in press). Within long-term intervals such as the Holocene or the Quaternary, even low-frequency1 high-magnitude events are part of a dynamic equilibrium and thereby represent a basic risk for life, settlements and installations in cold moun- tain areas (Haeberli 1992a). The main question is whether and, if yes, to what extent this historic situation has changed already and may further be changing in the future (cf. ScMyter et al. 1993, Zimmermann & Haeberli 1992).
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