Monitoring of glacier volume variation from multi-source data over geladandong area

Abstract

This paper presents a research on monitoring of glacier volume variation over the Geladandong area in Qinghai-Tibet plateau between 2000 and 2007 by integrating Landsat5 TM images, multi-source Digital Elevation Models (DEM) and the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) data from NASA Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat). Landsat TM images acquired in 2000 and 2007 respectively are used to extract glacial area of the two dates. SRTM DEM and the national 1:50,000 DEM are used to extract the thickness variation of glaciers between the year of 2000 and 2007. Since SRTM DEM is generated from interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images acquired in Feb. 2000, the elevation of glacial region could be underestimated due to the penetration of radar pulse to the ice and snow. Therefore, the IceSat GLAS data is employed to correct the penetration and refine the glacier's elevation of SRTM DEM. Finally, the glacier volume variation of Geladandong region between 2000 and 2007 is estimated by integrating the area and elevation changes.