Laura Gabriel

CR Cryospheric Sciences

The 2024 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Laura Gabriel for the poster/PICO entitled:

Exploring englacial hydrology with surface nuclear magnetic resonance (Gabriel, L.; Hertrich, M.; Moser, R.; Ogier, C.; Maurer, H.; Farinotti, D.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Laura Gabriel is a PhD candidate at ETH Zürich, affiliated with the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology and the Institute of Geophysics. Under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Farinotti, Dr. Marian Hertrich, and Prof. Hansruedi Maurer, Laura is working on the experimental investigation of en- and subglacial hydrology in mountain glaciers using surface nuclear magnetic resonance (SNMR).

SNMR is a geophysical method uniquely sensitive to water molecules, enabling the direct quantification of subsurface water content. In her work presented at EGU 2024, Laura shared insights from her first SNMR field campaign conducted on the Rhonegletscher in the summer of 2023. During this campaign, she and her team tested various measurement setups, including the use of additional receiver loops designed to filter out strong electromagnetic noise, which often obscures the actual signal of interest. These loops were instrumental in the data processing phase, allowing the extraction of SNMR signals despite a low signal-to-noise ratio. Preliminary results, supported by simplified 1D models, revealed a water content of 0.7-1.2% in the survey area.