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Arid Land Geography ›› 2019, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (3): 542-550.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2019.03.10

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Change of the modern glaciers in the eastern Himalaya near China and Bhutan border area from 1990 to 2015

WANG Jing, YANG Taibao, JI Qin, QIN Yan, HU Fansheng   

  1. (Institute of Glaciology and Ecogeography,College of Earth and Environmental Science,Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000,Gansu,China)

  • Received:2018-09-27 Revised:2019-01-29 Online:2019-05-25 Published:2019-05-20

Abstract: Using the remote sensing technology and the visual interpretation,this paper extracted the glacier boundaries of four phases in the border area between China and Bhutan in eastern Himalaya based on the Landsat image and the DEM image from 1990 to 2015 to investigate the relationship between the glacier boundary change and climate change.The results show that from 1990 to 2015,the shrunk area of the glacier is 191.87 km2,and the glacier region retreat rate on average reaches to 0.43% per year.According to the time division,the average annual retreat rate of glaciers was increased gradually,indicating that the glacier ablation rate was gradually accelerated.The total area of glaciers in the region showed a decreasing trend,and the glacier area of different grades showed a trend of retreat.The distribution of glaciers is mainly north,northwest and northeast oriented while the main direction of retreat is east,southeast and northeast oriented.based on meteorological grid data,the change rates of air temperature and precipitation in winter and summer were retrieved by using the fitting operation on the air temperature and precipitation in different time periods.From 1990 to 2015,there was not obvious variation in precipitation while the temperature was significantly raised up.Therefore,it is believed that the main factor of glacier retreat is the rising temperature.Two specific adjacent glaciers were chosen to estimate the surface velocity using the CIAS software and it is found that the surface velocity of glacier is the fastest near the equilibrium line.The glacier flow rate was gradually slowed down to the highest altitude,and the glacier flow rate was the minimum.The glacier flow rate was gradually decreased along both sides of the glacier main stream.The surface velocity estimation shows that the chosen ice lake in the Bhutan region may speed up the melting of the glacier.There is a negative correlation between the change of glacier area and the change of temperature.There is a positive correlation between the change of ice front area and temperature change.

Key words: Landsat image, the eastern Himalaya region, the change of glaciers, surface velocity estimation