Glacier–Permafrost Interaction at a Thrust Moraine Complex in the Glacier Forefield Muragl, Swiss Alps
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
this is a very good development of the glacier - permafrost relationship from a material point of view. In terms of methodology, the article is excellent. This issue is important for a more detailed understanding of the forms and processes occurring at the interface of the glacial and periglacial environment. In the attached text of the manuscript the authors will find more detailed suggestions for changes.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
thank you for the constructive comments and questions. You will find a detailed list of answers and edits regarding your comments in the attached file.
Sincerely,
Julius Kunz
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments to the authors and editors:
The paper deals with the internal structure of a (thrust) moraine complex in the well-studied Muragl glacier forefield, Swiss Alps – a topic that has been so far only poorly investigated in alpine environments. The study is clearly defined and based on new and meaningful geophysical (ERT and GPR) data, which allow interesting interpretation about the internal structure of the investigated (thrust) moraine complex and, in further consequence, on the evolution of the landform.
The manuscript is clearly structured and (as far as I can judge as non-native speaker) largely well formulated. Some linguistic suggestions for improvements are provided in the commented pdf.
Apart from a few criticisms in terms of content (which can be corrected/added quite easily), I recommend this interesting paper for publications after minor revisions (thanks for reading!).
Main points are listed in the following – for details see the commented pdf.
Main points to consider:
- Keywords: Consider to include "thrust moraine"
- Introduction: As the thrust moraine is the focus of the paper I suggest to provide some more basic information about terminology and genesis of this term and landform type, at least one or two sentences (e.g. according to Waller et al. 2012)
- The Research Area section is short but includes most fundamental information. In the geomorphologic map (Fig. 2), some signatures are difficult to distinguish - especially three classes within the category "dominant processes" (see pdf). I also suggest renaming the category “dominant processes” to “process domains”. Furthermore, the photos and the hillshade (Fig. 1) and the map (Fig. 2) could be better linked to each other and supplemented by additional information (see pdf).
- The Methods section is (as the authors rightly remarked) restricted to most important methodological basics and information about data acquisition and processing since the methods used are well-established technics. I agree. However, some points remain unclear and should be extended and/or corrected (see comments in the pdf).
- In the Results section, results and interpretation are somehow mixed up (highlighted in the pdf), which corresponds to the journal guidelines. I thus suggest renaming the chapter to "results and interpretation".
- The Discussion section requires some additional work. The interesting and important first paragraph is hard to follow and should be supported visually in one of the maps in Fig.1 or 2.
In my opinion, the study could benefit if previously published results would be provided in more detail and particularly, if new data would be linked to existing data on the site and compared to these - how, why and to what extend did resistivity patterns and values change through time?
Further, I think it could be worth to include a recent study on the topic in the discussion (on so-called glacitectonized frozen landforms, or GFLs) that was presented at this year’s EGU online conference (https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2020/EGU2020-18360.html?pdf) by Julie Wee et al. Her EUCOP5 abstract ("Dynamics of the Aget back-creeping push-moraine from 1998 to 2017"; available, e.g. via Research Gate) addressed a closely related topic, where she reports a decrease in resistivity within an alpine push moraine and a growth in active layer thickness between 1998 and 2017. She also reports on shear planes as well as on back-creeping processes. This might be an additional aspect to discuss since you also have former ERT data and data on surface movement indicating a similar creep direction “against the flow direction of the former glacier” (Kneisel & Kääb 2007), right? What do you think? - Figures are nicely illustrated, but in several cases, additional information needs to be provided (Figs. 1, 3 and 5) and the figures should be better linked to each other. Some figure captions are too short and need to be extended (see comments/suggestions in the pdf).
- References: The research area (which I unfortunately still do not know myself!) is well known from numerous publications related to glaciers and permafrost in glacier forefields. Some of these have been cited, others not. Please check if some important ones are missing, e.g.:
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2005.09.012
- https://doi.org/10.1016/S0924-2716(02)00114-4
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2012.07.008
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2013.12.022
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2005.09.012
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2006.07.005
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2010.08.012
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2008.12.002
- (…)
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
thank you for the constructive comments and questions. You will find a detailed list of answers and edits regarding your comments in the attachments.
Sincerely,
Julius Kunz
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
