Abstract
Glaciers in the Qilian Mountains are important sources of fresh-water for sustainable development in the Hexi Corridor in the arid northwest China. Over the last few decades, glaciers have generally shrunk across the globe due to climate warming. In order to understand the current state of glaciers in the Qilian Mountains, we compiled a new inventory of glaciers in the region using Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) images acquired in 2015, and identified 2748 glaciers that covered an area of 1539.30 ± 49.50 km2 with an ice volume of 81.69 ± 7.40 km3, among which the Shule River basin occupied the largest portion of glaciers (24.8% in number, 32.3% in area, and 35.6% in ice volume). In comparison to previous inventories, glacier area was found to shrink by 396.89 km2 (20.5%) in total, and 109 glaciers with an area of 8.94 km2 disappeared over the period from the 1960s to 2015. This situation was primarily caused by the increase in air temperature, and also related with the size of glacier and some local topographic parameters. In addition, the change of glaciers in the Qilian Mountains showed a distinct spatial pattern, i.e., their shrinking rate was large in the east and small in the west.
Highlights
Glaciers are considered as key indicators of climate change [1], potentially contributing to water resources and global sea level rise [2]
We applied a semi-automated method using the Red/Shortwave Infrared (SWIR) band ratio with an appropriate threshold to extract glacier outlines. This method is most applicable and effective for glacier classification according to the Global Land Ice Measurement Form Space (GLIMS)
Only a small number of glaciers accounts for most of the total area, while the rest of the smaller glaciers that are larger in number occupy a small proportion [30,31], which still holds in the Qilian Mountains
Summary
Glaciers are considered as key indicators of climate change [1], potentially contributing to water resources and global sea level rise [2]. Alpine glaciers are vital component of global cryosphere [3]. Global warming has significant impacts on glaciers worldwide [4], and the majority of mountain glaciers have suffered from rapid retreat in recent decades [5]. The shrinkage rate of glacier area generally increased from the continental interior to the Himalayas and peaked in the southeastern. Glaciers and glacial meltwater are the most important fresh-water resources and play a critical role in maintaining ecological balance and social and economic sustainable development in the Qilian Mountains, located in the northeastern edge of the TP [7]. Glaciers in the Qilian Mountains are of great significance to the runoff recharge in the Hexi
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