Spatiotemporal variability of glacier changes and their controlling factors in the Kanchenjunga region, Himalaya based on multi-source remote sensing data from 1975 to 2015

Xuanru Zhao; Xin Wang; Junfeng Wei; Zongli Jiang; Yong Zhang; Shiyin Liu

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140995

Spatiotemporal variability of glacier changes and their controlling factors in the Kanchenjunga region, Himalaya based on multi-source remote sensing data from 1975 to 2015

Sci Total Environ. 2020 Nov 25:745:140995. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140995. Epub 2020 Jul 18.

Authors

Xuanru Zhao¹, Xin Wang², Junfeng Wei¹, Zongli Jiang¹, Yong Zhang¹, Shiyin Liu³

Affiliations

¹ School of Resource Environment and Safety Engineering, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411100, PR China.
² School of Resource Environment and Safety Engineering, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411100, PR China; State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Science, Northwest Institute of Ecology and Environmental Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, PR China. Electronic address: wangx@hnust.edu.cn.
³ Institute of International Rivers and Eco-Security, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, PR China.

PMID: 32758725
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140995

Abstract

Spatio-temporal behavior of glaciers in the Himalayas has varied greatly in response to reported climate warming and other modulating factors such as topography, debris cover, and glacier morphology. In this paper, 429 glaciers were examined in the Kanchenjunga region in the middle of the Himalayas. Geodetic methods, feature-based image matching, and multi-parametric integrated approaches were used to detect differences of glacier change and the dominant characteristics driving these differences based on digital elevation models (DEMs), Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI images, Envisat/ASAR and Sentinel-1 data. The results showed that the average change rates in glacier area and surface elevation in 1975-2015 were -0.18 ± 0.07% a^-1 and - 0.32 ± 0.02 m a^-1, respectively. The rates of areal shrinkage of glaciers and the glacier surface velocity on the northern side of the Himalayan crest were 1.25 and 1.7 times larger than those of the glaciers on the southern slopes, respectively, whereas the rates of glacier thinning were lower in the north than in the south. The temperature increase from 1975 to 2015 caused an overall widespread glacier retreat in the region. However, differences in the topography of the Kanchenjunga region led to spatial variability in glacier changes with discrepancies as large as several times. The features of individual glaciers, such as glacier size, debris cover, and development of ice-contact glacial lakes enhanced the local complexity of glacier change and elusive response behaviors of the glaciers to climate warming led by the different topographic conditions.

Keywords: Climate change; Glacier changes; Himalaya; Local topography; Multi-source data; Physical features of glacier.