Glacier changes in the Karakoram region mapped by multi-mission satellite imagery

Glaciers in the Karakoram region are known to show stable and advancing terminus positions or surging behavior, which contrasts the worldwide retreat of many mountain glaciers. The present study uses Landsat imagery to derive an updated and extended glacier inventory. Surging and advancing glaciers and their annual termini position changes are mapped in addition. Out of 1334 glaciers, 134 show advancing or surging behavior, with a marked increase since 2000. The length distribution of surging glaciers differs significantly from non-surging glaciers. More than 50% of the advancing/surging glaciers are shorter than 10 km. Besides a regional spatial coverage of ice dynamics, high-resolution SAR data allows to investigate very small and comparably fast flowing glaciers (up to 1.8 m day−1). Such data enables mapping of temporal changes of ice dynamics of individual small surging or advancing glaciers. In a further case study, glacier volume changes of three glaciers around Braldu Glacier are quantified during a surge event comparing digital elevation models from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) and the new TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement (TanDEM-X) Mission. We recommend regular acquisitions of high resolution (bi-static) SAR satellite data and further exploitation of the archives in order to generate an improved database for monitoring changes, and to at least partially compensate for the lack of in-situ and long-term climatological measurements in the Karakoram region