Acta Geodaetica et Cartographica Sinica ›› 2024, Vol. 53 ›› Issue (5): 801-812.doi: 10.11947/j.AGCS.2024.20230262

• Significant changes in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau cryosphere • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Estimating glacier mass balance in the source region of the Yangtze River during 2000—2020 through InSAR

Jia LI1,2,3,4(), Zhiwei LI1,3(), Wenjie ZHONG1,3,4, Yunyang GU1,3,4, Long LI5, Lei GUO1,3, Juanjuan FENG1,3   

  1. 1.School of Geoscience and Info-physics, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
    2.State Key Laboratory of Geodesy and Earth's Dynamics, Wuhan 430077, China
    3.Key Laboratory of Metallogenic Prediction of Nonferrous Metals and Geological Environment Monitoring (Central South University), Ministry of Education, Changsha 410083, China
    4.Laboratory of Geo-hazards Perception, Cognition and Predication, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
    5.Qinghai Remote Sensing Center for Natural Resources, Xining 810001, China
  • Received:2023-06-28 Revised:2024-01-05 Published:2024-06-19
  • Contact: Zhiwei LI E-mail:lijia20050710@csu.edu.cn;zwli@csu.edu.cn
  • About author:LI Jia (1986—), male, PhD, associate professor, majors in remote sensing of glaciers, remote sensing of geohazards, and InSAR basic theory. E-mail: lilia20050710@csu.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    The National Key Research and Development Program of China(2022YFB3903602);The National Natural Science Foundation of China(42374053);The Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation(2023JJ30656);The Open Fund of the State Key Laboratory of Geodesy and Earth's Dynamics(SKLGED2023-2-3)

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Abstract:

This paper aims to estimate glacier mass balance in the source region of the Yangtze River, to investigate the factors that affect glacier mass balance, and to reveal the impacts of glacier mass changes on the runoff of the rivers. In particular, the InSAR technique and bistatic TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X images were utilized to generate two DEMs that cover most of glaciers in the source region of the Yangtze River. The new DEMs were then differenced with SRTM DEM to obtain glacier thickness changes during 2000—2012 and 2000—2020, and a glacier mass density was used to converted the glacier thickness changes into glacier mass balance. The discrepancy between the derived glacier mass balance and the field measured glacier mass balance is only 0.03 m w.e.a－1, indicating a high precision of the results. The glacier mass balance in source region of the Yangtze River during 2000—2012 and 2000—2020 were (－0.30±0.02) m w.e.a－1 and (－0.45±0.04) m w.e.a－1, respectively. Glacier melting during 2012—2020 apparently intensified relative to that during 2000—2012. Rise of summer temperature and decease of summer precipitation were deemed as the main cause of glacier mass loss. Moreover, the glacier melting rate decreases from the southeastern part to the northwestern part of the study area. Lower summer temperature, smaller temperature rising speed, higher glacier altitude, higher glacier accumulation area ratio, steeper glacier surface of the west area may account for this phenomenon. During 2000—2020, the glacier mass loss in the basin of the Tuotuo River contributed 4.4% of the runoff of the Tuotuo River, and those in the basins of the Tuotuo River and the Dangqu River contributed 2.5% of the runoff of the Tongtian River, indicating that glacier mass loss had slight impact on the runoff the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.

Key words: source region of the Yangtze River, glacier mass balance, TanDEM-X images, melting, runoff

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