Abstract
Accurately mapping and monitoring glacier changes over decades is important for providing information to support sustainable use of water resource in arid regions of northwest China. Since 1970, glaciers in the Eastern Altun Mountains showed remarkable recession. Further study is indispensable to indicate the extent and amplitude of glacial change at basin and individual glacier scale. In this study, spatiotemporal glacier changes referring to the year 1972, 1990, 2000 and 2010 were studied for the Eastern Altun Mountains using Landsat MSS/TM/ETM+ images and glacier volume-area scaling. The results demonstrated that the total area and volume of glaciers in EAMs decreased significantly by 10.70±0.57 km² (19.56±10.41%) and 0.61±0.03 km³ (23.19±11.40%) during 1972–2010, respectively. More than half of the total receding area occurred during 1990–2000, primarily due to higher temperature increasing. However, varied response of individual glaciers indicated that glacier change was also affected by glacier dynamics, which was related to local topography. In addition, five glaciers unrecorded in the glacier inventory of China were reported in this study.
Highlights
Alpine glacier, which is known as mountain glacier, has long been considered one of the most visible indicators of climate change [1]
As the main water source of rivers in arid regions, northwest China, alpine glaciers are essential to support the sustainable development of oases [2]
Traditional methods for glacier thickness measuring, e.g. snow pits or ground penetrating radar (GPR) measurement, are difficult to accomplish for a large amount of glaciers due to its high costs and risks in field surveys
Summary
Alpine glacier, which is known as mountain glacier, has long been considered one of the most visible indicators of climate change [1]. As the main water source of rivers in arid regions, northwest China, alpine glaciers are essential to support the sustainable development of oases [2]. Recent studies in the Qilian Mountains [6, 7], Tarim basin [8] and Tianshan Mountains [2, 4] of northwest China have reported prominent glacier shrinkage during past decades. Compared to glacier surface area, changes in glacier thickness and volume have more important and direct impacts on potential runoff of rivers.
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