Analysis of glacier flow trends of East Himalayan Glaciers using Remote Sensing Datasets

  • Unique Paper ID: 166940
  • Volume: 11
  • Issue: 2
  • PageNo: 2384-2388
  • Abstract:
  • Glacier velocity is one of the most important parameter used in glacier dynamics studies. Various image matching techniques implemented in different domains, have been utilized to estimate the surface velocity of glaciers. Feature tracking using remote sensing is widely used method to estimate glacier velocity. In this study, an analysis is done on the annual glacier flow trends from year 2016 to 2021 on three selected glaciers of East Himalayan Region using GIV tool. The glaciers are Zemu glacier, South Lhonak glacier and East Rathong glacier. Glacier Image Velocimetry (GIV) is feature tracking based open-source tool available which can automatically detect, filter, and extract velocities from huge datasets. To check the performance of the GIV tool, this study evaluates this tool using all available optical satellite datasets such as Landsat and Sentinel-2. The velocity measurements from the GIV tool are validated against In-situ data from Kongsvegen glacier located in Norway where stake-wise field data is available. Velocity measurements estimated from GIV tool for all four glaciers were also validated against Stable Ground Velocity calculated by GIV tool. The annual glacier velocity values from GIV tool were found to be almost double with respect to those obtained from in-situ measurements on Kongsvegen glacier. Glacier velocity measurements from the GIV and Cosi-Corr tool (SAR dataset) were found in good agreement on Kongsvegen glacier. The stable ground velocity of all the four glaciers is found to be well within the allowed limit. From trend analysis, it was found that Zemu glacier which has surface area of 70 km2 has increasing velocity trend and other two small glacier 8-12km2 of area, South Lhonak and East Rathong glacier have stagnant velocity trend.

Cite This Article

  • ISSN: 2349-6002
  • Volume: 11
  • Issue: 2
  • PageNo: 2384-2388

Analysis of glacier flow trends of East Himalayan Glaciers using Remote Sensing Datasets

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