Himalayas possess one of the largest resources of snow and ice, which act as a huge freshwater reservoir. Monitoring the
glaciers is important to assess the overall reservoir health. In this investigation glacial retreat was estimated for 466
glaciers in Chenab, Parbati and Baspa basins from 1962. Expeditions to Chhota Shigri, Patsio and Samudra Tapu glaciers
in Chenab basin, Parbati glacier in Parbati basin and Shaune Garang glacier in Baspa basin were organized to identify
and map glacial terminus. The investigation has shown, an overall reduction in glacier area from 2077 sq km to 1628 sq
km from 1962, an overall deglaciation of 21 percent. However, number of glaciers is increased due to fragmentation.
Mean of glacial extent was reduced from 1.4 to 0.32 km2 between 1962 and 2001. In addition, number of glaciers with
higher areal extent is reduced and lower areal extent has been increased between the periods. Small glaciarates and ice
fields have shown extensive deglaciation. For example, 127 glaciarates and ice fields less than 1 km2 have shown retreat of 38 percent from 1962, possibly due to small response time. This means combination glacial fragmentation, higher
retreat of small glaciers and climate change are influencing sustainability of Himalayan glaciers.
The landforms always withhold the imprints of characteristic geomorphic processes within it. In the upper reaches of Baspa valley, geomorphic records of glacial origin have been investigated for three glaciers viz., Shaune Garang glacier (North facing), Jorya Garang glacier (North facing) and Saro glacier (South facing). The field investigation was carried out for Shaune Garang glacier and extrapolated for Gor Garang and Saro glacier. This terrain is inaccessible and characterized by highly rugged and adverse climatic conditions. Visual interpretation technique of remote sensing is found to be accurate, economical and time saving, hence, the glacial landforms were mapped from Liss III + Pan merged data of IRS 1D, October 2001. The hanging valleys, terminal moraines and lateral moraines are found to be one of the important geomorphic indicators for reconstruction of paleo-glacial history of Baspa valley. The results show that maximum of three sets of lateral and terminal moraines have been identified in Shaune Garang glacier, Jorya garang shows three sets of terminal and two set of lateral moraine and Saro glacier shows one terminal moraine and two sets of lateral moraine indicating respective stages of deglaciation. The length of surface accumulation observed in above data of Oct, 2001 for Shaune Garang, Jorya Garang and Saro glacier is 3.75km, 11.6km and 1.17km respectively. Thus, it shows that south facing glaciers show minimum surface accumulation as compared to the north facing glacier and maximum three stages of deglaciation have been recorded in present study.
Field observations were carried out using Spectroradiometer (350-2500nm) to understand effect of
contamination on the snow reflectance and mix of snow, vegetation and soil by different proportions on its reflectance.
The experiments were carried out in Beas Basin, India during the winter 2004-05 and 2005-06. The investigation has
shown that as contamination increases, snow reflectance decreases in all wavelengths, however highest decrease was
observed in visible region. In addition, peak of reflectance shifted to high wavelengths, as amount contamination
increases. For snow cover and soil cover mix, as proportion of soil cover increases reflectance increases in SWIR region
and decreases in visible region. In snow and vegetation mix, as proportion of vegetation increases, curve pattern of
vegetation was observed. This means reflectance and absorption due to vegetation presence in visible and NIR region
can be observed. If proportion of vegetation area is equal to snow, then reflectance pattern is similar to vegetation.
However, if vegetation proportion is lower, then reflectance curve moves to higher reflectance range in visible and NIR
region and beyond that reflectance slightly reduces. This study suggests, if hyperspectral data is available then proportion
of snow in mixed pixel can be estimated. This study will help in improving existing Normalized Difference Snow Index
based algorithms for snow cover monitoring and developing new algorithm, if hyperspectral data is available.
Conference Committee Involvement (1)
Agriculture and Hydrology Applications of Remote Sensing
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.