The eastern Pamir Plateau, with a mean altitude of 5000 m, forms a large-scale glacier region with a size of 2054 km 2 that serves as an important environmental climate condition for central Asia. In this study, we estimated the spatio-temporal patterns of glacier activities in this region by using the time series sub-pixel offsets derived from 63 Sentinel-2 optical images between December 31, 2020 and December 31, 2021. Our results indicated the mean glacier flow velocity in this region was 0.531 m/d ± 0.007 m/d in 2021, and the Kongur Tagh Glacier was much more active than the Kingata Glacier and Muztagh Ata Glacier. The time series observations revealed that the glacier motion involves a pre-melting period (January-April) with a velocity of 0.600 m/d ± 0.012 m/d, a melting period (May-August) with a velocity of 0.608 m/d ± 0.003 m/d, and a post-melting period (September-December) with a velocity of 0.659 m/d ± 0.006 m/d. In order to get insights into the characteristics of these glacier activities, we carried out a correlation analysis between the glacier flow velocity change and its potential caused reasons (i.e., topography, temperature, precipitation, glacier surges, debriscover, and glacier thickness), and current results suggest that the glacier flow velocity is influenced by a combination of these factors.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.