SNOW AND GLACIER MAPPING

TEAM

Priyabrata Visista Reddy Aditya Shenoy Shibashish

Mishra Padhy

IMH/10025/17 IMH/10007/17 IMH/10004/17 IMH/10023/17

INTRODUCTION
Snow : Atmospheric water vapor frozen into ice crystals and falling in
light white flakes or lying on the ground as a white layer.
Glacier : are large masses of snow, recrystallized ice and rock debris that
accumulate in great quantities and begin to flow outwards and
downwards under the pressure of their own weight
Snow cover : ground covered with snow showing some depth
 Ice Sheets  Piedmont Glaciers
 Ice Shelves  Cirque Glaciers

 Ice Caps  Hanging Glaciers

 Ice Streams  Tidewater Glaciers
 Ice fields

 Mountain Glaciers
 Valley Glaciers

TYPES OF GLACIERS
TYPES OF SNOW COVER
 New snow  Perennial snow

 Firn  Powder snow

 Névé

 Old snow

 Seasonal snow
SATTELITES USED
• The Terra(EOS AM-1) satellite operated by NASA,
with the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer(MODIS) and ASTER sensors, is
regularly used to monitor glaciers. It is affordable
and it has good resolution(15m).
• SPOT-5,ENVI SAT,MODIS,Quickbird and Geo-Eye
can be used for measuring elevation change.
METHODS FOR SNOW AND
GLACIER MAPPING
• FALSE COLOUR COMPOSITES
• MANUAL DELINEATION
• SEGMENTATION OF RATIO
IMAGES
• CLASSIFICATION
• REFLECTION
METHODS
At the beginning of glacier studies with Landsat, (1) false colour composites (FCCs) from
MSS digital data (later also TM) were used to delineate the accumulation and ablation area of
a glacier or to classify different ice and snow facies. Afterwards and also recently glacier
mapping with TM was carried out by (2) manual delineation of the glacier outline with a cursor
on a FCC from MSS data and combination with a TM image. Further studies used (3)
segmentation of ratio images with reflectance thresholds and (4) different supervised
classification techniques. Another aspect (5) is the calculation of glacier reflection with TM
and the comparison with ground measurements. Furthermore some studies about snow
mapping with TM exists (e.g. DOZIER 1989). They can be used for calculation of the
accumulation area ratio (AAR) of a glacier to estimate its mass balance. All methods and
corresponding authors are summarized in the table below.
 Glaciers Provide Drinking Water

 Glaciers Irrigate Crops

 Glaciers Help Generate Hydroelectric Power

 Recreation
 Skiing and snowboarding
 Snowshoeing
 Snowmobiling

DO GLACIERS AND SNOW AFFECT PEOPLE?

ARE GLACIERS AND SNOW
DANGEROUS?
• Flooding Caused By • Snow Avalanches
A Glacier • Ice Storm
• Avalanches From
• Blizzard
Glaciers
• Thunder Snow
• The Threat Of
Icebergs
SNOW & GLACIER MELTING
• Global warming(0.32° increase)
• Greenhouse effect
• Climatic change
• Land use changes
• Deforestation (increase in atmospheric methane )
 Snow and glacier melting and accumulation are important processes in
regional water and energy cycles.
 Glaciers and snow cover respond to climate change notably over the
Tibetan Plateau (TP) as the Earth's Third Pole where complex
topography and lack of ground‐based observations result in knowledge
gaps in hydrological processes and large uncertainties in model output.
 Satellite and ground‐based precipitation and land surface temperature
are jointly used as model forcing.

SNOW AND GLACIER MELT RUNOFF

MODELLING
MELTING OF GLACIERS IN CHINA HIMALAYA
MELTING OF GLACIERS IN INDIAN HIMALAYAS
GLACIER RETREAT IN BHUTAN HIMALAYAS