**A. Appendices and nomenclatures**

**Glacier (discovered and covered):** permanent ice body generated on the ground by snow and/or ice recrystallization due to the compaction of its own weight, without or with significant detrital coverage, which is visible for more than 2 consecutive years, with movement evidence or not. Glaciers can have different morphologies.

**Groundwater:** this term is used here to describe indistinctly (unless clarified) to spring waters and can represent waters of the soil matrix or from deep water and old sources.

**Periglacial environment:** this term is used to describe the climate and the geomorphic processes of the peripheral areas to the discovered ice and to those distant zones to these also without direct relation with glaciers but with the low temperatures, with permanently frozen soils and even with those zones with short period, seasonal, or daily freezes. In many cases the ice can be trapped and preserved under natural conditions for a long time, thus constituting the decisive element of the cryogenic environment [25].

**Permafrost:** soil that remains frozen for 2 or more consecutive years.

**Rock glacier:** frozen debris body and ice with evidences of movement by gravity and permafrost plastic deformation, whose origin is related to the cryogenic processes associated with permanently frozen ground and with underground ice or with ice from uncovered and debris-covered glaciers.

**Snow basin:** refers to a basin where the snow precipitation is the very major water source.

**Total precipitation:** refers to the meteoric water precipitated at any state (solid or liquid).
