Volume change of tropical Peruvian glaciers from multi-temporal digital elevation models and volume–surface area scaling

ABSTRACT

To estimate hydrological storage and better understand the climatic implications of glacier retreat, the volume of glacial ice is a critical but problematic variable. High-accuracy mapping of glacier surface changes over time can directly estimate volume changes, allowing for explicit testing and refining of scaling relationships between changes in glacier volume and surface area that are necessary for making an inventory of remaining glacier mass with remote imagery. A combination of airborne LiDAR, spaceborne remote sensing imagery, digital photogrammetry, and geospatial techniques is used to assess the changes in volume and surface area of six glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru, between 1962 and 2008. The loss of glacier surface area ranges from 30.79% to 72.62%, corresponding to individual glacier volume changes ranging from 0.019 to 0.150 km³. The volume–surface area scaling is deduced from the change in volume related to the change in surface area by a power relationship quantified from 13 different epoch series. The result shows that there is about 36% more volume loss relative to the loss expected from surface area alone of these individual glaciers in the study area than other glaciers in mid- and high-latitudes from the previous study. Since the error of volume estimation shows a much larger impact on the increase with the size of glaciers, volume–surface area scaling analysis needs to include larger ice masses with regional inventories for a more accurate estimation.

KEYWORDS:

• Tropical glaciers
• glacier volume change
• volume–surface area scaling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Kyung In Huh is an Assistant Professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (CPP), Pomona, CA, USA and holds a PhD in Geography and a Master's degree in Earth Sciences both from Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. Her main areas of research are mountain glaciers, climate change, GIS, GPS, and remote sensing.

Bryan G. Mark is a Professor at Ohio State University and holds a PhD in Earth Sciences from Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA and a Master's degree in Geography from Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. He is interested in climate-glacier-hydrologic dynamics over different time scales with the coupled human-natural systems of water resources of the tropical Andes.

Yushin Ahn is an Assistant Professor at Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA and holds both a PhD and a Master's degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science from Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA and another Master's degree in Geographic Information Engineering from Inha University, Incheon, Korea. His area of expertise is digital photogrammetry, digital mapping, sensor modeling/calibration, 3D reconstruction from remote sensing.

Chris Hopkinson is the Campus Alberta Innovates Program (CAIP) Research Chair in Terrestrial Ecosystems Remote Sensing and an Associate Professor at University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. He holds a PhD and a Master's degree both in Geography from Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His main areas of research are remote sensing (LiDAR, thermal, photogrammetry), climate change, water resources, glaciology, forestry, ecosystem modeling and change as well as aerial survey logistics and monitoring.

Additional information

Funding

This research project was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration New Investigator Program [Grant #NNX06AF11G].