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 A number of studies have been taken up for inventory, monitoring and retreat of Himalayan glaciers. Glacier inventory of Himalayas (Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra Basins); Monitoring of snowline at the end of ablation season for estimation of glacier mass balance; Estimation of retreat of Himalayan glaciers and Snow cover monitoring in Himalayan region are some of them. Glacial inventory has been carried out for the glacial regions of Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra Basins covered approximately in 1250 map sheets at 1:50,000 scale. Specific measurements of mapped glacier features are used as inputs for generating the glacier inventory data. The data sheet provides glacier wise details mainly related to the glacier identification in terms of number and name, glacier location in terms of coordinate details, information on the elevation, measurements of dimensions and orientation, etc.
Glacier mass balance studies were taken up for 10 selected medium sized sub-basins spread over in Indian Himalayan region (Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra Rivers). The LISS III scenes are used to ascertain the boundary of glaciers using higher resolution data. Glacier boundaries are overlaid on all AWiFS scenes sequentially. Band 4 is essentially used to discriminate snow and cloud on the image.
Glacier Retreat mapping was done for the 14 selected basins spread over in Indian Himalayan Region. Which involves, creation of database of spatial extent of all glaciers and overlaying of the boundaries; checking of the boundaries in the accumulation zone based on shadow of the ridges & on the drainages; identification of glacier retreat and estimation of glacier area evacuated and verification in the field the location of snout using GPS observations. Monitoring of Snow cover of the Indian Himalayan region covering Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra river basins was carried out using multidate AWiFS data from Resourcesat-1 and snow cover atlases have been prepared.
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