Glacier outlines in the Ala Archa valley, Kyrgyzstan between 1968-2017

The inventory contains shapefiles of the glacier area in the Ala Archa valley for the years 1968, 1975, 1994, 2010 and 2017. The Ala Archa valley lies in the Kyrgyz Ala-Too (Kyrgyz range) which represents the north-western part of the Tien Shan. The area is very important for scientific research and the freshwater supply for the greater Bishkek region, as it lies in the vicinity of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. The Mapping of the glaciers was conducted based on declassified satellite imagery obtained from the USGS for the days 19/08/1968, 11/07/1975 and Landsat imagery for the days 01/09/1994, 28/08/2010 and 31/08/2017. The satellite images were carefully selected in order to find cloud cover-free images in the summer months (July-Aug-Sept). The classification of the glaciers is based on the normalized difference snow index (NDSI) method and was enhanced manually