Third party funded individual grant
Start date : 01.09.2019
End date : 31.08.2021
Glacier in High Mountain Asia (HMA) are a major water resource in many regions during dry
season. Across HMA, they show a heterogeneous patter of elevation and mass changes. This
pattern is driven by the prevailing climatic conditions and observed changes. A so far poorly
addressed problem by global glacier models is debris-cover and its role in climate change
scenarios. The difficulty is that current global glacier melt models have only an in-sufficient
representation of debris and its enhancing or insulating effects – depending on its thickness. This is partly because no glacier specific and regional scale assessments are available for calibration and
validation of respective physically-based model routines. On the other hand not regionally available
data sets are available. In this project we aim at providing respective data sets on a regional scale.
We will combine different remote sensing analyses in order to better assess the role of debris under
different conditions and combine this data sets with in-situ observations from the Indian Himalaya as
well as with glacier melt modelling.
Specifically, The German group aims at deriving elevation change fields from the SRTM (2000) and
German TanDEM-X mission (2010 – ) for different time intervals over the entire Indian Himalaya. It
will use Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellite data to classify and derive debris cover maps for all
glaciers. Glacier outlines will be taken from the Randolph Glacier Inventory (Vers. 6). The Landsat
data also provides data in the thermal spectrum. The German group will test different approaches to
derive debris-cover thickness from those approaches. In-situ measurements of debris-thickness
from the JNU partner will be included in this process. Subsequently, a correlation analysis of the
elevation change fields with the debris cover thickness maps will be performed in order to assess
the suitability of the approaches to derive debris cover thickness.
Since we expect that small-scale changes will happen and that melt on debris covered glacier
occurs frequently at ice cliffs of different exposition, we will use digital elevation models derived from
repeat drone surveys conducted and analysed by the Indian counterparts. This data will allow us to
compute precise elevation change and ablation information over short time scales in order to
assess the locations on debris-covered glaciers where melt primarily occurs.
The proposed project is based on complementary cooperative research between German and the
Indian academic institution. With the activity we aim at expanding our existing cooperation and
strengthen the ties that have been built-up by previous teaching exchange (GIAN class) as well as
visiting PhD students (DAAD scholarship). The project will envolve young academics (Master
students) from both sides in order to provide them the possibility to start their scientific career in an
international framework at an early stage.