Abstract
Accurate measurements of glacier elevation changes play a crucial role in various glaciological studies related to glacier dynamics and mass balance. In this paper, glacier elevation changes of Urumqi Glacier No.1 between August 2015 and August 2017 were investigated using Sentinel-1A data and DInSAR technology. Meanwhile, the atmospheric delay error was corrected with the MODIS MOD05_L2 products. The weight selection iteration method was applied to calibrate the glacier elevation changes in the mass balance years 2015–2016 and 2016–2017. Finally, the geodetic method was employed to calculate the elevation change values of individual stakes of Urumqi Glacier No.1. Moreover, the elevation change values corrected by the weight selection iteration method were verified. Results showed as follows: (1) the elevation of Urumqi Glacier No.1 glacier affected by atmospheric delay was 1.270 cm from 2015 to 2016. The glacier elevation affected by atmospheric delay from 2016 to 2017 was 1.071 cm. (2) The elevation change value of Urumqi Glacier No.1 was −1.101 m from 2015 to 2016, and the elevation of Urumqi Glacier No.1 decreased by 1.299 m from 2016 to 2017. The overall thickness of Urumqi Glacier No. 1 was thinning. (3) By comparing the elevation change results of individual stakes with corresponding points corrected by the weight selection iteration method, the mean squared errors of difference were 0.343 m and 0.280 m between the two mass balance years, respectively. (4) The accuracy of elevation change in non-glaciated areas was 0.039 m from 2015 to 2016 and 0.034 m from 2016 to 2017. Therefore, it is reliable to use Sentinel-1A data and the study method proposed in this paper to calculate the elevation change of mountain glaciers with very low horizontal movement.
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Acknowledgement
The research reported in this manuscript is funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 41761134093), Gansu Provincial Department of Education: ‘Star of Innovation’ Project of Excellent Graduate Students (Grants No. 2021CXZX-188). The authors also sincerely thank all the editors and anonymous reviewers for their beneficial suggestions to improve the quality of this article.
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Liu, Jl., Zhao, J., Li, Zq. et al. Elevation change of the Urumqi Glacier No.1 derived from Sentinel-1A data. J. Mt. Sci. 18, 2656–2671 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-020-6562-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-020-6562-9