Glacial Lake Area Change and Potential Outburst Flood Hazard Assessment in the Bhutan Himalaya

Against the background of climate change-induced glacier melting, numerous glacial lakes are formed across high mountain areas worldwide. Existing glacial lake inventories, chiefly created using Landsat satellite imagery, mainly relate to 1990 onwards and relatively long (decadal) temporal scales. Moreover, there is a lack of robust information on the expansion and the GLOF hazard status of glacial lakes in the Bhutan Himalaya. We mapped Bhutanese glacial lakes from the 1960s to 2020, and used these data to determine their distribution patterns, expansion behavior, and GLOF hazard status. 2,187 glacial lakes (corresponding to 130.19 +/- 2.09 km(2)) were mapped from high spatial resolution (1.82-7.62 m), Corona KH-4 images from the 1960s. Using the Sentinel-2 (10 m) and Sentinel-1 (20 m x 22 m), we mapped 2,553 (151.81 +/- 7.76 km(2)), 2,566 (152.64 +/- 7.83 km(2)), 2,572 (153.94 +/- 7.83 km(2)), 2,569 (153.97 +/- 7.79 km(2)) and 2,574 (156.63 +/- 7.95 km(2)) glacial lakes in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, respectively. The glacier-fed lakes were mainly present in the Phochu (22.63%) and the Kurichu (20.66%) basins. A total of 157 glacier-fed lakes have changed into non-glacier-fed lakes over the 60 years of lake evolution. Glacier-connected lakes (which constitutes 42.25% of the total glacier-fed lake) area growth accounted for 75.4% of the total expansion, reaffirming the dominant role of glacier-melt water in expanding glacial lakes. Between 2016 and 2020, 19 (4.82 km(2)) new glacial lakes were formed with an average annual expansion rate of 0.96 km(2) per year. We identified 31 lakes with a very-high and 34 with high GLOF hazard levels. These very-high to high GLOF hazard lakes were primarily located in the Phochu, Kurichu, Drangmechu, and Mochu basins. We concluded that the increasing glacier melt is the main driver of glacial lake expansion. Our results imply that extending glacial lakes studies back to the 1960s provides new insights on glacial lake evolution from glacier-fed lakes to non-glacier-fed lakes. Additionally, we reaffirmed the capacity of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data to determine annual glacial lake changes. The results from this study can be a valuable basis for future glacial lake monitoring and prioritizing limited resources for GLOF mitigation programs.

Automated summary

The study found that glacier melt is the main driver of glacial lake expansion, and it is necessary to extend glacial lake evolution studies back to the 1960s. Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data have shown good capabilities in determining glacial lake changes.