Remote sensing of glacier change in West Greenland: accounting for the occurrence of surge-type glaciers

Michele Citterio, Frank Paul, Andreas P. Ahlstrøm, Hans F. Jepsen, Anker Weidick

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftArtikelForskningpeer review

31 Citationer (Scopus)

Resumé

Automated glacier mapping from thresholded band ratios of multispectral satellite data is a well-established technique to update glacier inventories over large and remote regions. The local glaciers and ice caps on Greenland are of particular interest for such efforts, as they have been only partly mapped, mainly during the 1940s-60s, and their potential contribution to global sea-level rise could be large. Here we use three Landsat ETM+ scenes from 2001 covering Disko Island (Qeqertarsuaq) and the Nuussuaq and Svartenhuk peninsulas, West Greenland, to map the glacier extent in 2001 of 1172 entities. We also manually digitize Little Ice Age (LIA) extents from clearly visible trimlines for a subsample of 500 entities. In this region with numerous surge-type glaciers, the related area-change calculation is challenging and we consider different samples with and without known surging glaciers. For the three regions the mean area changes are -28%, -20% and -23%, respectively, when known surge-type glaciers are excluded. The glaciers on smaller islands and peninsulas closer to the margin of the ice sheet show a lower mean area change of -15%. Moreover, lower (-16%) and upper (-21 %) bounds are calculated for the overall area changes in the entire region between the LIA and 2001 using different upscaling assumptions. Cumulative length changes since the LIA are found to be slightly lower for surge-type glaciers.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
Sider (fra-til)70-80
Antal sider11
TidsskriftAnnals of Glaciology
Vol/bind50
Udgave nummer53
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2009

Programområde

  • Programområde 5: Natur og klima

Fingeraftryk

Dyk ned i forskningsemnerne om 'Remote sensing of glacier change in West Greenland: accounting for the occurrence of surge-type glaciers'. Sammen danner de et unikt fingeraftryk.

Citationsformater