Changes in snow and glacier cover in an arid watershed of the western Kunlun Mountains using multisource remote-sensing data

Abstract

Snow and glaciers in the mountain watersheds of the Tarim River basin in western China provide the primary water resources to cover the needs of downstream oases. Remote sensing provides a practical approach to monitoring the change in snow and glacier cover in those mountain watersheds. This study investigated the change in snow and glacier cover in one such mountain watershed using multisource remote-sensing data, including the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Landsat (Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+)), Corona, and Google Earth^TM imagery. With 10 years’ daily MODIS snow-cover data from 2002 to 2012, we used two de-cloud methods before calculating daily snow-cover percentage (SCP), annual snow-cover frequency (SCF), and annual minimum snow-cover percentage (AMSCP) for the watershed. Mann–Kendall analysis showed no significant trend in any of those snow-cover characterizations. With a total of 22 Landsat images from 1967 to 2011, we used band ratio and supervised classification methods for snow classification for Landsat TM/ETM+ images and MSS images, respectively. The Landsat snow-cover data were divided into two periods (1976–2002 and 2004–2011). Statistical tests indicated no significant difference in either the variance or mean of SCPs between the two periods. Three glaciers were identified from Landsat images of 1998 and 2011, and their total area increased by 12.6%. In addition, three rock glaciers were also identified on both the Corona image of 1968 and the Google high-resolution image of 2007, and their area increased by 2.5%. Overall, based on multisource remote-sensing data sets, our study found no evidence of significant changes in snow and glacier cover in the watershed.

Acknowledgements

This study is supported by the ‘One Hundred Talents Programme’ of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Basic Research Programme of China (973 Programme, no. 2010CB951003). Constructive criticism and comments by Dr Timothy Warner (Editor) and two anonymous referees are greatly appreciated.