A dataset of glacier outline in the Three-River Headwaters region in 2000–2019

Abstract

The Three-River Headwaters (TRH) region (89°45'–102°23'E, 31°39'–36°12'N), located in the southern part of Qinghai Province in China and on the central-eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau, is an important water conservation area and the key area for eco-environment protection in China. The glaciers located in this region are important water supply for the Yangtze, Yellow, and Mekong rivers. Based on ASTER GDEM and Landsat TM/ OLI images acquired in 2000s, 2010s, and 2019, the outlines of individual glaciers in the TRH region were obtained by using the band ratio method combined with manual revision. Meanwhile, some properties of each glacier including name, area, elevation, mountain, drainage basin and remote sensing imagery adopted were provided. This dataset is composed of the vectorized data of glacier outlines in 2000s, 2010s and 2019, and an excel table containing the change information of individual glacier area in 2000–2019, which can be used as the basic data for research on glacier changes, the assessment of glacial water resources in the TRH region.The dataset consists of 2 subsets in total. Glacier_outlines_TRH.zip is composed of glacier outlines in the Three-River Headwaters region in 2000, 2010 and 2019, with a data volume of 16.2 MB; Glacier_change_TRH.zip is an Excel table containing area change of individual glaciers in the Three-River Headwaters region in 2000–2019, with a data volume of 168 KB.