Research on the Image Calculation and Change of Glacier Area in West Kunlun Based on Remote Sensing and Information Extraction

Abstract

Glaciers can very sensitively reflect environmental changes in a certain area and are one of the important factors commonly used to study climate change. The Kunlun Mountain glacier and its glacial melt water are the most important water resources in western China, and are of great significance to maintaining the fragile ecological balance of the region and the sustainable development of social economy. Based on the remote sensing images of Landsat TM, MSS and Landsat 8 OLI from 1997 to 2017, this paper studies the changes of glaciers in the region over the past 20 years by extracting information from the images. The research results show that the Kunlun Mountain glacier as a whole shows a phenomenon of shrinking glacier area. Based on the analysis of meteorological data, we infer that the changes in the Kunlun Mountain glacier area are mainly caused by the combined effects of average temperature and annual cumulative precipitation. The increase in precipitation from 1997 to 2007 led to an increase in the area of glaciers, while the area of glaciers from 2007 to 2016 increased. The reduction is related to the average temperature.