Glacier inventory and recent glacier variations in the Andes of Chile, South America

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The first satellite-derived inventory of glaciers and rock glaciers in Chile, created from Landsat TM/ETM+ images spanning between 2000 and 2003 using a semi-automated procedure, is presented in a single standardized format. Large glacierized areas in the Altiplano, Palena Province and the periphery of the Patagonian icefields are inventoried. The Chilean glacierized area is 23 708 ± 1185 km 2 , including ∼3200 km 2 of both debris-covered glaciers and rock glaciers. Glacier distribution varies as a result of climatic gradients with latitude and elevation, with 0.8% occurring in the Desert Andes (17°30′-32°S); 3.6% in the Central Andes (32-36°S), 6.2% in the Lakes District and Palena Province (36-46°S), and 89.3% in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (46-56°S).Glacier outlines, across all glacierized regions and size classes, updated to 2015 using Landsat 8 images for 98 complexes indicate a decline in areal extent affecting mostly clean-ice glaciers (−92.3 ± 4.6 km 2 ), whereas debris-covered glaciers and rock glaciers in the Desert and Central Andes appear nearly unchanged in their extent. Glacier attributes estimated from this new inventory provide valuable insights into spatial patterns of glacier shrinkage for assessing future glacier changes in response to climate change.

Performance Assessment of TanDEM-X DEM for Mountain Glacier Elevation Change Detection

“…The large magnitude of thinning in the lowest part of the glacier points to a retreat trend, in line with the negative mean ∆Z. According to Barcaza et al [49], Universidad Glacier lost 0.17 km 2 of surface area between 2000 and 2015, hence experiencing a frontal retreat. The thinning rate is not uniform over the lower tongue, where alternating bands of higher and lower ∆Z are present ( Figure 6).…”

An Updated Multi-Temporal Glacier Inventory for the Patagonian Andes With Changes Between the Little Ice Age and 2016

“…While studies of individual ice caps (e.g., Rivera and Casassa, 2004;Falaschi et al, 2013) and -fields (Rivera et al, 2007;Schneider et al, 2007;Masiokas et al, 2015) provide a high level of detail, their results are largely incomparable, as they document the state of the local cryosphere at specific points in time, and employ a wealth of methods differing by sensor, approach or thresholds. For example, newly established glacier inventories for the Chilean Andes (Barcaza et al, 2017) performed a glacial change analysis on a small amount of 100 glaciers along a 4,000 km transect for the period 2000-2015 using Landsat TM/ETM+, while Masiokas et al (2015) report changes of the northeast SPI between 1979 and 2005 using ASTER and ETM+ data for 250 glaciers.…”

Interannual variability in glacier contribution to runoff from a high‐elevation Andean catchment: understanding the role of debris cover in glacier hydrology

“…Time series analysis of observational records (Burger, Brock, & Montecinos, 2018;Casassa et al, 2009) is a useful tool to establish general data trends but is of limited use when observations are scarce in space and time and cannot provide insights into which processes drive observed changes. Additionally, while satellite-based glacier inventories (Barcaza et al, 2017;Malmros et al, 2016;Nicholson et al, 2010;Rabatel, Castebrunet, Favier, Nicholson, & Kinnard, 2011;Rivera et al, 2002) aided the establishment of baseline areal changes, they do not generally assess mass balance or volumes change and cannot be used to explain the causes of observed changes. Therefore, there is a need for an integrated approach to understand the midterm and long-term changes in glaciers and glacier runoff in the high-elevation catchments of the central Andes that combines both high-resolution glacio-hydrological modelling and mass balance estimates from remote sensing (Pellicciotti, Ragettli, Carenzo, & McPhee, 2014), which are increasingly used to evaluate model simulations.…”