Abstract
In this chapter, select glaciers across the Himalayan region were studied for a comparative assessment of glacier velocity estimated through optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) based technique. Preliminary study of the glaciers with reference to their morphological and physical parameters was done, followed by glacier velocity estimation. The length of glaciers based on satellite data from 2019 was estimated. Siachen Glacier was the longest (69 km) followed by Gangotri Glacier (31 km), Bara Sigri (27 km) whereas Langtang (18 km) and Zemu (24 km) Glaciers are the smallest among the observed glaciers. Majority of glaciers had a northwest orientation with dominant slope over trunk glacier under 7 degrees. The average surface velocity estimated using satellite data sets followed the same pattern as of glacier area with Siachen glacier exhibiting the highest average velocity (72 m/year) followed by Bara Sigri (42 m/year) and Gangotri (38 m/year) Glaciers with the lowest velocity found over Langtang (13 m/year) and Zemu (18 m/year) Glaciers. It was found that both types of images from optical and SAR data provided similar output on glacier velocity. Siachen, Gangotri, Bara Sigri Glaciers had only a maximum 10% difference, whereas Langtang and Zemu Glaciers showed the least difference in the outputs by 7% only. The difference in velocity of the Siachen Glacier was up to 10m/year whereas the other glaciers showed only up to 5m/yr. As both the data sets have inherent errors, they complement each other. It was noted that even though SAR had a little higher accuracy both the data sets can be used interchangeably depending upon terrain and cloud condition.
Published Version
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