Multitemporal glacier inventory revealing four decades of glacier changes in the Ladakh region

Multi-temporal inventories of glacierised regions provide an improved understanding of water resource availability. In this study, we present a Landsat-based multi-temporal inventory of glaciers in four Upper Indus sub-basins and three internal drainage basins in the Ladakh region for the years 1977, 1994, 2009 and 2019. The study records data on 2257 glaciers (of individual size > 0.5 km(2)) covering an area of similar to 7923 +/- 106 km(2) which is equivalent to similar to 30 % of the total glacier population and similar to 89 % of the total glacierised area of the region. Glacier area ranged between 0.5 +/- 0.02 and 862 +/- 16 km(2), while glacier length ranged between 0.4 +/- 0.02 and 73 +/- 0.54 km. Shayok Basin has the largest glacierised area and glacier population, while Tsokar has the least. Results show that the highest concentration of glaciers is found in the higher elevation zones, between 5000 and 6000 m a.s.l., with most of the glaciers facing towards the NW-NE quadrant. The error assessment shows that the uncertainty, based on the buffer-based approach, ranges between 2.6 % and 5.1 % for glacier area, and 1.5 % and 2.6 % for glacier length with a mean uncertainty of 3.2 % and 1.8 %, respectively. This multitemporal inventory is in good agreement with previous studies undertaken in parts of the Ladakh region. The new glacier database for the Ladakh region will be valuable for policy-making bodies, and future glaciological and hydrological studies. The data can be viewed and downloaded from PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.940994 (Soheb et al., 2022).

Automated summary

This study presents a multi-temporal inventory of glaciers in the Ladakh region, covering four Upper Indus sub-basins and three internal drainage basins. The inventory includes data from 1977, 1994, 2009, and 2019, and records information on 2257 glaciers. Results show the highest concentration of glaciers in the higher elevation zones.