Glacier retreat as a consequence of climate change influences freshwater ecosystems in manifold ways, yet the physical and chemical bases of these effects are poorly studied. Here, we characterize how water temperature differs between alpine lakes with and without direct glacier influence on seasonal and diurnal timescales. Using high temporal resolution monitoring of temperature in 4 lakes loc...

Glacier-related applications of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in high mountain regions with steep topography are relatively rare. This study makes a contribution to the lack of UAS applications in studying alpine glaciers in the European Alps. We transferred an established workflow of UAS-based change detection procedures to Austria’s largest glacier, the Pasterze Glacier. We focused on a sel...

Eliot Glacier is a small (1.6 km) glacier on Mount Hood, Oregon, USA, and its ablation zone is largely covered with rock debris. We examine the interrelated processes of ablation rates, ice thickness and surface velocities to understand the retreat rate of this glacier. Since measurements began in 1901, the glacier has retreated 680m, lost 19% of its area and thinned by about 50m at the lower g...

We present in this paper a polynomial fitting method applicable to segments of footprints measured by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) to estimate glacier thickness change. Our modification makes the method applicable to complex topography, such as a large mountain glacier. After a full analysis of the planar fitting method to characterize errors of estimates due to complex topograp...

An assessment of glacier shrinkage (reduction of area) for all of HighMountain Asia requires a complete compilation of measured rates of change and also a methodology for objective comparison of rates. I present a compilation from 155 publications reporting glacier area changes, and also a methodology that overcomes the main obstacles hindering comparison. Glacier areas are not always assigned ...

Although reliable figures are often missing, considerable detrimental changes due to shrinking glaciers are universally expected for water availability in river systems under the influence of ongoing global climate change. We estimate the contribution potential of seasonally delayed glacier melt water to total water availability in large river systems. We find that the seasonally delayed glacie...

This paper presents a relation between the three glacier surface velocity components, the surface flux-divergence, glacier thickness and bottom melt and displacement. The relation can be used as an extension to the surface parallel flow assumption often used with interferometric synthetic aperture measurements of glacier velocities. The assumptions for the derivation are described and important...

Terminus fluctuations of five glaciers and the correspondence of these fluctuations to temperature and precipitation patterns were assessed at Oregon’s Mount Hood over the period 1901–2001. Historical photographs, descriptions, and climate data, combined with contemporary GPS measurements and GIS analysis, revealed that each glacier experienced overall retreat, ranging from 62 m at the Newton C...

The primary succession on glacier forelands is characterized by a sequence of early and late successional species, but whether there is also a chronosequence at the intraspecific, genetic level is a matter of debate. Two opposing hypotheses differ in their prediction of genetic diversity in colonizing populations due to founder effects and postcolonization gene immigration. The development of g...

In this paper we present a stereo feature-based method using SIFT (Scale-invariant feature transform) descriptors. We use automatic feature extractors, matching algorithms between images and techniques of robust estimation to produce a DTM (Digital Terrain Model) using convergent shots of a rock glacier.The geomorphologic structure observed in this study is the Veleta rock glacier (Sierra Nevad...