Combination of Aerial, Satellite, and UAV Photogrammetry for Quantifying Rock Glacier Kinematics in the Dry Andes of Chile (30°S) Since the 1950s

Abstract

The diachronic analysis of aerial and satellite imagery, uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) and in situ surveys obtained between 1956 and 2019 are employed to analyse landform surface kinematics for the Tapado site located in the Dry Andes of Chile. A feature tracking procedure was used between series of orthorectified and co-registered images to calculate surface velocities on several ice-debris landforms, including rock glaciers and debris-covered glaciers. For the active rock glaciers, the results exhibit typical viscous flow, though local destabilisation process seems to occur, increased velocities since 2000 (>1 m/yr) and terminus advance. Nevertheless, the debris-covered glaciers displays heterogeneous spatial patterns of surface velocities, together with collapse (downwasting) associated with the development of thermokarst depressions and supraglacial ponds. Our findings show that surface kinematics and multitemporal observations derived from different sensors are valuable tools for differentiating between glacial and periglacial features. The pluri-decadal time series since 1956 constitute a unique dataset for documenting the surface kinematics of creeping mountain permafrost in the Southern Hemisphere. The approach developed in this work offers a way forward to reconstruct the recent behaviour of glacial and periglacial features in the Andes, where archival aerial photographs are available but have not previously been processed rigorously to obtain an accurate assessment of landform kinematics.

Combination of historical and modern data to decipher the geomorphic evolution of the Innere Ölgruben rock glacier, Kaunertal, Austria, over almost a century (1922–2021)

“…Studies on the current inter-, intra-, and multi-annual kinematics of rock glaciers and their forcing factors (e.g., Cicoira et al, 6 Kenner et al, 9 Delaloye et al, 18 Delaloye et al, 19 Kenner et al, 20 and Wirz et al 21 ) and studies investigating the long-term kinematic development of rock glaciers over several decades are available. These multidecadal studies are mainly conducted in the European Alps (e.g., Kellerer-Pirklbauer and Kaufmann, 8 Kenner et al, 9 Marcer et al, 12 Avian et al, 22 Dusik et al, 23 Fleischer et al, 24 Hartl et al, 25 Kaufmann and Landstädter, 26 Kellerer-Pirklbauer and Kaufmann, 27 Lugon and Stoffel, 28 Roer, 29 and Scapozza et al 30 ) and also in other mountain regions such as the northern Tienshan, 31 the Andes of Chile, 32 Front Range, the United States, 33 or Iceland. 34,35 Because, with a few exceptions, multi-decadal kinematic time series of rock glaciers with geodetic methods are hardly available, 25,36 most studies employ a retrospective analysis of aerial photographs to derive information on flow velocities and surface elevation changes (e.g., Fleischer et al, 24 Kellerer-Pirklbauer and Kaufmann, 27 Roer, 29 Kääb et al, 31 Kaufmann et al, 37 and Monnier and Kinnard 38 ).…”

Alpine rock glacier activity over Holocene to modern timescales (western French Alps)

“…Although rock glaciers have received considerable attention in the last couple decades, being catalogued in several geographic areas (see Jones et al, 2019, for the latest review), the formation and evolution of rock glaciers are still a subject of debate, with two main holistic views (see Haeberli et al, 2006;Berthling, 2011). On the one hand, rock glaciers are seen as periglacial features in which ice forms and ice content increases within debris interstices and thereby forms an ice-rock mixture that creeps by the influence of gravity and sufficient slope (e.g., Wahrhaftig and Cox, 1959;Ikeda et al, 2008). On the other hand, rock glaciers are also thought to be the remnants of glaciers with a deforming ice core protected by a continuous debris cover (e.g., Whalley, 1974;Monnier and Kinnard, 2015;Anderson et al, 2018).…”

“…Indeed, methods such as lidar (Micheletti et al, 2017), InSAR (e.g., Liu et al, 2013;Barboux et al, 2014;Strozzi et al, 2020), aerial photogrammetry (e.g., Kaab et al, 1997), and unpiloted aerial vehicle systems (e.g., Dall'Asta et al, 2017;Vivero and Lambiel, 2019) have made a remarkable improvement to the temporal and spatial resolution of surface velocity surveys for rock glaciers. Recent studies have shown the feasibility of using high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) and orthorectified images produced from historical aerial and satellite images to reconstruct the surface velocity of rock glaciers over the last 7 decades (Fleischer et al, 2021;Vivero et al, 2021;Kääb et al, 2021;Cusicanqui et al, 2021). Extrapolations from short-term surface velocities have been used to estimate the rock glacier formation time and to reconstruct their activity over longer timescales (Kaab et al, 1997;Frauenfelder and Kááb, 2000;Bodin, 2013).…”

Internal structure and water routing of an ice-debris landform assemblage using multiple geophysical methods in the semiarid Andes

“…The ablation zone of it is covered by penitentes, originated from non-linear ablation with sublimation prevalence at the top of the cones and melt at the bottom (Sinclair and MacDonell, 2016;Nicholson et al, 2018). In connection with the Tapado Glacier, a complex ice-debris landform assemblage consisting of a series of debris-covered and rock glaciers, along with moraine complexes, is present (Monnier et al, 2014;Vivero et al, 2021). A morphologically continuous landscape exists between the debris-covered and rock glaciers.…”