Abstract
The Himalayan cryosphere comprises a large concentration of glaciers that feed numerous perennial rivers, providing food and water security to millions of people living in the downstream regions. To understand the effect of changing climate on these glaciers, an assessment of the mass loss in the glacier is crucial. In this study, the volume of 279 glaciers in the Parvati basin of the Himalaya in the year 2000 was estimated as 21.3 ± 3.8 km3 using the Laminar flow and scaling methods. The regional mass loss of the glaciers over the period 2000–2015 was calculated using the Improved Accumulation Area Ratio (IAAR) and Geodetic methods. The IAAR method’s estimate was based on meteorological data, whereas the geodetic method’s assessment was based on Cartosat-1 satellite data for three years (2011, 2014, 2015) and SRTM DEM for 2000. The mean elevation difference based on the aforementioned DEMs was − 4.6 ± 0.26 m, whereas the mass loss for the glaciers was 14% in the Parvati basin between 2000 and 2015. The mass balance of the glaciers in the basin is estimated as − 0.44 ± 0.23 m w.e.a−1 and − 0.30 ± 0.23 m w.e.a−1, using the IAAR and Geodetic methods, respectively. These methods provide synergetic means to analyze the basin-wide mass changes of glaciers over multiple (annual and long-term) temporal scales. The volume of ice stored in the glaciers of the Parvati basin and their mass changes are quantified at a regional scale to help understand their spatial heterogeneity over those timescales.
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Data availability
The datasets generated/analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors express their gratitude to the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for providing constructive remarks/suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript, which were very helpful in improving its quality. The authors thank the Divecha Centre for Climate Change (DCCC) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for providing the support and facilities to carry out this research and obtain field observations. The authors are also grateful to the RGI consortium and USGS for their free data policy, allowing us to use the glacier outlines, Landsat, and SRTM datasets. The authors thank the entire team and porters during the field collection program in the Parvati Valley. The authors also thank Dr. Shashank Bhushan (University of Washington) for providing the Python code to calculate the mass balance, Dr. Remya SN (DCCC) for helping with the DEM generation, and Ms. Tejal Shirsat (DCCC) for providing the data on hydropower capacity in the Parvati basin.
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Pradeep Srinivasalu: Conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing—original draft, visualization. Anil V Kulkarni: supervision, conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, writing—review and editing. Srinivas VV: supervision, writing—review and editing. Satheesh SK: supervision.
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Srinivasalu, P., Kulkarni, A.V., Srinivas, V.V. et al. Catchment scale volume and mass changes for glaciers in the Parvati basin of Western Himalaya during 2000–2015. Environ Earth Sci 83, 221 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-024-11529-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-024-11529-x