Title
Earth Observation to Investigate Occurrence, Characteristics and Changes of Glaciers, Glacial Lakes and Rock Glaciers in the Poiqu River Basin (Central Himalaya)
Abstract
Meltwater from the cryosphere contributes a significant fraction of the freshwater resources in the countries receiving water from the Third Pole. Within the ESA-MOST Dragon 4 project, we addressed in particular changes of glaciers and proglacial lakes and their interaction. In addition, we investigated rock glaciers in permafrost environments. Here, we focus on the detailed investigations which have been performed in the Poiqu River Basin, central Himalaya. We used in particular multi-temporal stereo satellite imagery, including high-resolution 1960/70s Corona and Hexagon spy images and contemporary Pleiades data. Sentinel-2 data was applied to assess the glacier flow. The results reveal that glacier mass loss continuously increased with a mass budget of -0.42 +/- 0.11 m w.e.a(-1) for the period 2004-2018. The mass loss has been primarily driven by an increase in summer temperature and is further accelerated by proglacial lakes, which have become abundant. The glacial lake area more than doubled between 1964 and 2017. The termini of glaciers that flow into lakes moved on average twice as fast as glaciers terminating on land, indicating that dynamical thinning plays an important role. Rock glaciers are abundant, covering approximately 21 km(2), which was more than 10% of the glacier area (approximately 190 km(2)) in 2015. With ongoing glacier wastage, rock glaciers can become an increasingly important water resource.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.3390/rs14081927
REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Himalaya, glacier changes, glacier velocity, geodetic method, glacial lakes, rock glacier
Journal
14
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
8
2072-4292
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
9
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Bolch, T.182.45
Tandong Yao241.85
Atanu Bhattacharya300.34
Yan Hu400.34
Owen King500.34
Lin Liu615026.85
Jan B. Pronk700.34
Philipp Rastner800.34
Guoqing Zhang900.34