Alpine glacier change in the Eastern Altun mountains of Northwest China during 1972-2010

Xinyang Yu; Changhe Lu

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0117262

Alpine glacier change in the Eastern Altun mountains of Northwest China during 1972-2010

PLoS One. 2015 Feb 27;10(2):e0117262. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117262. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Xinyang Yu¹, Changhe Lu²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
² Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Accurately mapping and monitoring glacier changes over decades is important for providing information to support sustainable use of water resource in arid regions of northwest China. Since 1970, glaciers in the Eastern Altun Mountains showed remarkable recession. Further study is indispensable to indicate the extent and amplitude of glacial change at basin and individual glacier scale. In this study, spatiotemporal glacier changes referring to the year 1972, 1990, 2000 and 2010 were studied for the Eastern Altun Mountains using Landsat MSS/TM/ETM+ images and glacier volume-area scaling. The results demonstrated that the total area and volume of glaciers in EAMs decreased significantly by 10.70±0.57 km² (19.56±10.41%) and 0.61±0.03 km³ (23.19±11.40%) during 1972-2010, respectively. More than half of the total receding area occurred during 1990-2000, primarily due to higher temperature increasing. However, varied response of individual glaciers indicated that glacier change was also affected by glacier dynamics, which was related to local topography. In addition, five glaciers unrecorded in the glacier inventory of China were reported in this study.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

China
Ice Cover*

Grants and funding

The authors’ work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2012CB955304). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.