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One of the major challenges in avalanche hazard assessment is the correctestimation of avalanche release area size, which is of crucial importance toevaluate the potential danger that avalanches pose to roads, railways orinfrastructure. Terrain analysis plays an important role in assessing thepotential size of avalanche releases areas and is commonly based on digital terrain models (DTMs) of asnow-free summer terrain. However, a snow-covered winter terrain cansignificantly differ from its underlying, snow-free terrain. This may lead todifferent, and/or potentially larger release areas. To investigate thishypothesis, the relation between avalanche release area size, snow depth andsurface roughness was investigated using avalanche observations ofartificially triggered slab avalanches over a period of 15 years in ahigh-alpine field site. High-resolution, continuous snow depth measurements attimes of avalanche release showed a decrease of mean surface roughness withincreasing release area size, both for the bed surface and the snow surfacebefore avalanche release. Further, surface roughness patterns in snow-coveredwinter terrain appeared to be well suited to demarcate release areas,suggesting an increase of potential release area size with greater snowdepth. In this context, snow depth around terrain features that serve aspotential delineation borders, such as ridges or trenches, appeared to beparticularly relevant for release area size. Furthermore, snow depth measuredat a nearby weather station was, to a considerable extent, related to potentialrelease area size, as it was often representative of snow depth around thosecritical features where snow can accumulate over a long period beforebecoming susceptible to avalanche release. Snow depth – due to its link tosurface roughness – could therefore serve as a highly useful variable withregard to potential release area definition for varying snow cover scenarios,as, for example, the avalanche hazard assessment for transport routes or skiresorts

Linking snow depth to avalanche release area size: measurements from the Vallée de la Sionne field site