(2020). Structure and Evolution of the Drainage System of a Himalayan Debris-Covered Glacier, and its Relationship with Patterns of Mass Loss. Photographs of McCall Glacier, Alaska, 1958 and 2003 Sources: Post, 1958; 2 Nolan, 2003 3 Web update: August 2016 Figure 1. The mean annual precipitation is approximately 1,600mm per year at 5,300m a.s.l. (2012). Glaciol. Earth Sci. Hersbach, H., Bell, B., Berrisford, P., Hirahara, S., Hornyi, A., MuozSabater, J., et al. 33, 287302. The probability density represents the distribution of lake areas and differs each year. For this reason, we chose the random forest approach with individual training data derived from scenes with the same acquisition date. This mountain range is home to some of the highest peaks in the world, including the famous K2. Two previous studies have classified the supraglacial lakes on the Baltoro Glacier, but only for one to three scenes per year. Monthly means of the total lake area (data), model fit, seasonal components, linear trend, and residuals for 2016 to 2020. They form as rain or meltwater accumulates in depressions of the debris cover in early spring. (2006). J. Glaciol. Overview of the sensor characteristics and acquisition parameters. The mapping of the seasonal lake evolution uses a semi-automatic approach, which includes a random forest classifier applied separately to each sensor. A direct connection between supraglacial lake evolution and climate could not be identified, even though the climate data show a tendency to greater precipitation and higher temperatures in terms of amplitude and time. Formation Conditions of Supraglacial Lakes on Debris-Covered Glaciers in the Himalaya. J. Geophys. The height of K2 Base Camp is just over 5000m but this won't be the highest point of the route. MAJA is a processor for cloud detection and atmospheric correction and is specifically designed to process optical time series (Hagolle et al., 2017). Glaciers are shown in pale blue, snow in light blue to . 62, 467485. . If the water is able to drain to the glacier bed, it can support basal sliding and hence higher glacier velocities (Sakai and Fujita, 2006; Sakai, 2012; Watson et al., 2016; Benn et al., 2017; Miles E. S. et al., 2017; Miles et al., 2020). doi:10.1007/s00477-018-1605-2, Kraaijenbrink, P., Meijer, S. W., Shea, J. M., Pellicciotti, F., De Jong, S. M., and Immerzeel, W. W. (2016). The Dynamics of Supraglacial Ponds in the everest Region, central Himalaya. It's located in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan, home to . Int. Misclassifications like ice-covered surfaces of the tributaries Yermanendu and Biarchedi Glacier and ice sails were manually removed. Seasonal Surface Velocities of a Himalayan Glacier Derived by Automated Correlation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Imagery. Using seven images from Landsat, the animation compresses 25 years of change into just 0.7 seconds to reveal the flow of the Baltoro glacier tongue and its surrounding tributaries in the Karakoram mountain range in Asia. TABLE 1. For the orthorectification, the 3-arcsecond Copernicus-DEM (GLO-90) (Airbus, 2020) was used as it had the best geometric correspondence to Sentinel-2 and PlanetScope data. Overall, the probability density data reinforce the observation of there being great year-to-year variability. The Baltoro Glacier is situated in the northern part of Pakistan near the border to India and China (Figure 1). At 8,611 m (28,251 ft), K2 is the highest mountain in the region, and . Remote Sensing 8, 119. Geophys. (B) Distribution of the number of lakes according to their area in m2. In contrast, the lake areas of 2017 and 2019 were bimodal with a more pronounced shape in 2017. PD processed the MAJA corrected Sentinel-2 data. doi:10.5194/tc-4-115-2010, Thompson, S., Benn, D. I., Mertes, J., and Luckman, A. We have known about this for over 50 years, but still have a very limited scientific understanding of what is going on there. doi:10.3189/002214310791190785. A combination of linear regression and the Hausdorff distance are used to harmonize between SAR- and optical-derived lake areas, producing a consistent and internally robust time series dynamics. Cryospheric Sciences Volume 9 - 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2021.652279 This article is part of the Research Topic Debris-Covered Glaciers: Formation, Governing Processes, Present Status and Future Directions View all 20 Articles doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2012.03.008, Benn, D. I., Thompson, S., Gulley, J., Mertes, J., Luckman, A., and Nicholson, L. (2017). Third Edition (Burlington: Morgan Kaufmann), 47101. In addition, the connection to climate parameters and oscillations demands further process-based analysis. Important place names are indicated. (2019). The animations show that they are not actually retreating, but are advancing or surging and flowing into each other. The Baltoro Glacier, at 62 kilometers long, is one of the longest glaciers outside of the polar regions.It is in Baltistan, in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, and runs through part of the Karakoram mountain range. With an up-glacier expansion of the debris cover, these effects will be intensified with time (Mlg et al., 2020; Xie et al., 2020). The Use of the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) in the Delineation of Open Water Features. Glacial Lakes in the Himalayas: a Review on Formation and Expansion Processes. All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. All authors helped to edit and to improve the manuscript. Classification and subsequent processing steps were implemented in the open-source software RStudio. 123, 127138. Glob. The local distribution of the lakes densified, especially in the glacier section between 3,710m and 3,880m a.s.l. Located in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan, it runs through part of the Karakoram mountain range, which is home to second highest mountain on earth, K2 (8,611M) and three other 8000 meter peaks. The absorption of solar radiation in the water leads to a higher ice ablation, and water draining through the glacier to its bed leads to a higher velocity. Available at: https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/march-3rd-warmest-record-many-contrasts (Accessed 05 29, 2021). AS helped with the methodology. The supraglacial lakes were mostly fed by precipitation either directly with rainfall or time delayed via snowmelt in the hummocks. Baltoro Glacier - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Towards Understanding the Pattern of Glacier Mass Balances in High Mountain Asia Using Regional Climatic Modelling. Miles K. E. et al. The Baltoro Muztagh is to the north and east of the glacier, while the Masherbrum Mountains lie to the south. Dyn. Geomorphology 357 (12), 702712. The regional extent of the Baltoro Glacier system and relevant Ice Melting under a Thin Layer of Moraine, and the Existence of Ice Cores in Moraine Ridges. Geophys. We used data acquired between April and September for the years 20162020, and the number and timing of images differed for each season of study, depending on data availability (Table 1). 8, 308. doi:10.3389/feart.2020.00308, Keywords: supraglacial lake, ice-dammed lake, Baltoro Glacier, remote sensing, summertime series, multi-sensor, multi-temporal, Citation: Wendleder A, Schmitt A, Erbertseder T, DAngelo P, Mayer C and Braun MH (2021) Seasonal Evolution of Supraglacial Lakes on Baltoro Glacier From 2016 to 2020. doi:10.3390/rs12060943, Selmes, N., Murray, T., and James, T. D. (2011). Geosci. Additionally, warmer springs lead to greater lake drainage later in the same year as more meltwater causes redevelopment of the subsurface drainage system (Liu et al., 2015). Thus, larger lakes comprised a larger percentage of the total lake area through time. The outlier detection was performed on each lake separately. (2009), and 4.0% in Selmes et al. doi:10.1029/2020gl092150, Cannon, F., Carvalho, L. M. V., Jones, C., and Bookhagen, B. More reason for you to put it on your must visit list. The years 2016 and 2017 showed the smallest areas with 3.606 and 3.653km2, respectively. We further derived the date of the maximum lake area for each summer season from 2016 to 2020 (Table 3). 55, 10611071. Clouds showed a high reflection compared to the surrounding area with highest rates in the blue band (Roth, 2019). (2020). Although a near neighbour of Biafo, it has some very different characteristics. Seasonal evolution of the total supraglacial lake area in km2 from April to September for 2016 to 2020. J. Glaciol. The main feature of MAJA is the use of multi-temporal information contained in the time series to better estimate aerosol optical thickness and correct atmospheric effects (Hagolle et al., 2017). The sixth and seventh (higher-elevation) sectors consistently had the lowest number of lakes (<50). Water 9, 405429. Change 56, 137152. doi:10.3390/rs9080831. Most of the Himalayan glaciers are in retreat, at least in part because of climate change. However, the mean relative RSE of the multi-temporal time series was at 1.0% (total area of 9.151km2 with an absolute RSE of 0.0945km2) and showed better accuracy than the mean relative RSE of Sentinel-2, PlanetScope, TerraSAR-X, and Sentinel-1 with 7.1% (total area of 7.483km2 with an absolute RSE of 0.054km2). Res. ORIGINAL RESEARCH article Front. Sentinel-1 Product Specification. J. Glaciol. A Decadal Investigation of Supraglacial Lakes in West greenland Using a Fully Automatic Detection and Tracking Algorithm. Planet. *Correspondence: Anna Wendleder, anna.wendleder@dlr.de, Debris-Covered Glaciers: Formation, Governing Processes, Present Status and Future Directions, View all Published today in The Cryosphere journal, these new animations provide a novel look at glacier dynamics, revealing changes over a much longer time and at a much larger scale than ever before. Read More Earth Sci. In the final classification, snow was classified as ice because of its spectral similarity, and shadow and cloud classes were both omitted since all of the PlanetScope imagery we selected was cloud-free. The lake area ranged between 500m2 to 440,000m2. (1993). The glacier response depends on debris thickness and its spatial distribution (Benn et al., 2012). Res. Santer, B. D., Wigley, T. M. L., Boyle, J. S., Gaffen, D. J., Hnilo, J. J., Nychka, D., et al. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1209633. Lett. Res. Wendleder et al. The glacier boundaries are derived from a Landsat-7 scene acquired on July 12, 2010, based on the Normalized Difference Snow index and manual editing. The years 20182020 had between 70 and 90 lakes in this sector. The lake area evolution can be divided into three distinct stages: 1) in 2016 and 2017, the total lake area remains below 2km2 with a maximum in early June and end-July, respectively, followed by a consistent decrease from early and mid-August onward, 2) 2018 and 2019 were characterized by larger water areas of about 2.5km2 from mid-June to mid-July and a steeper decrease from end-July onward, and 3) in 2020, the lake area peaks at 2.62km2 in early June with a following decrease until mid-August and a short increase from mid-August to mid-September. The random classifier was executed separately on the ascending and descending orbits of the Sentinel-1 and TerraSAR-X datasets. (2020) was based on the ground sampling of 3m. According to SPI and STI, the years 20162017 were influenced by stronger precipitation and higher air temperatures in April and May compared to 2018, 2019, and 2020. This is supported by pronounced positive anomalies of the SPI and STI during the observation period. (2018) calculated the NDWI based on the green and the near-infrared band for the Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) Level-2 data. Digitale Bildverarbeitung; Grundlagen und Anwendungen. This was 24weeks in advance of other years. doi:10.1002/qj.3803, Hewitt, K. (2011). However, to better understand the seasonal evolution of supraglacial lakes and the relationship between lake growth and climate, a continuous time series covering a period of several years is essential. 33, 15. A and D in parentheses denote the passing direction, i.e., ascending or descending. Basic Image Filtering Operations, in Signal Processing and its Applications. Sentinel-2 provides a continuous, radiometrically stable time series but without daily or sub-daily imaging capability; this can be filled by the high temporal sampling of PlanetScope data. All four sensor systems are characterized by frequent and consistent coverage. Additionally, a gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) texture derived with a 3 3 kernel filters in the 0direction was added to the feature space (Habercker, 1987). The time series decomposition shows a linear increase in the lake area of 11.12 9.57% per year. In 2020, the increase in lake area between mid-April and early June is similar in 2018 and 2019, but instead of a constant lake area until mid-July, it decreased. sectors showed an increase of 1.82%, 1.56%, and 2.03%, respectively. The SAR-derived lake areas were underestimated and had to be harmonized in order to achieve a consistent lake area time series. This enables the comparability within the data and potentially supports the use of our training data for supraglacial lake detection on other debris-covered glaciers.