Combining optial-thermal remote sensing data and topographic slope for the identification of debris-covered glaciers

Abstract

Debris-covered glaciers are an important component of glacier systems on Earth. In this paper, using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images, MOD05 products and digital elevation model (DEM) as data source. Land surface reflectance, land surface temperature (LST) and topographic slope are retrieved from optical bands, thermal band and DEM, respectively. A rule set that combines optical reflectance, LST and slope is proposed to identify debris-covered glaciers. The experimental results indicate that when introducing LST, the overall accuracy of identification increase by approximately 2.38% compared to that without using LST, and the majority of misclassifications of debris-covered glaciers are corrected.