Abstract. Ice flow velocity over long time series in Greenland plays a vital role in estimating and predicting the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet and its contribution to global sea level rise. However, there are few Greenland ice flow velocity products with large spatial coverage available showing the Greenland ice flow velocity pattern before the 1990s. We proposed three methods, including parallax decomposition, grid-based NCC image matching, feature and gird-based image matching with constraints for estimation of surface velocity in East Antarctica based on ARGON KH-5 and LANDSAT imagery, and a systematic compilation method for the ice surface velocity in East Antarctica from the 1960s to 1980s. Based on the above methods and cartographic processes, this study designed a framework for the mapping of the historical ice flow velocity of the Greenland ice sheet. Currently, the early LANDSAT images covering several glaciers in North Greenland and Northwest Greenland have been processed and applied to velocity mapping using the cartographic process proposed in this study, and some preliminary results have been obtained.

ABSTRACT:Global climate change is one of the major challenges that all nations are commonly facing. Long-term observations of the Antarctic ice sheet have been playing a critical role in quantitatively estimating and predicting effects resulting from the global changes. The film-based ARGON reconnaissance imagery provides a remarkable data source for studying the Antarctic ice-sheet in 1960s, thus greatly extending the time period of Antarctica surface observations. To deal with the low-quality images and the unavailability of camera poses, a systematic photogrammetric approach is proposed to reconstruct the interior and exterior orientation information for further glacial mapping applications, including ice flow velocity mapping and mass balance estimation. Some noteworthy details while performing geometric modelling using the ARGON images were introduced, including methods and results for handling specific effects of film deformation, damaged or missing fiducial marks and calibration report, automatic fiducial mark detection, control point selection through Antarctic shadow and ice surface terrain analysis, and others. Several sites in East Antarctica were tested. As an example, four images in the Byrd glacier region were used to assess the accuracy of the geometric modelling. A digital elevation model (DEM) and an orthophoto map of Byrd glacier were generated. The accuracy of the ground positions estimated by using independent check points is within one nominal pixel of 140 m of ARGON imagery. Furthermore, a number of significant features, such as ice flow velocity and regional change patterns, will be extracted and analysed.