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Giant <i>Aufeis</i> in the Pangong Tso Basin: Inventory of a Neglected Cryospheric Component in Eastern Ladakh and Western Tibet
oleh: Tobias Schmitt, Dagmar Brombierstäudl, Susanne Schmidt, Marcus Nüsser
| Format: | Article |
|---|---|
| Diterbitkan: | MDPI AG 2024-02-01 |
Deskripsi
Cryosphere studies in High Mountain Asia (HMA) typically focus on glaciers, seasonal snow cover, and permafrost. As an additional and mostly overlooked cryosphere component, <i>aufeis</i> occurs frequently in cold-arid regions and covers extensive areas of the Trans-Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau. This largely neglected cryosphere component generally forms in winter from repeated freezing of seepage or overflow. In this article, the occurrence of <i>aufeis</i> fields in the endorheic Pangong Tso Basin (PTB), with a total area of 31,000 km<sup>2</sup>, is inventoried and examined. Based on a semi-automatic remote sensing approach using Sentinel-2 imagery, about 1000 <i>aufeis</i> fields were detected in the spring of 2019, covering a total area of approximately 86 km<sup>2</sup> and with an average individual size of 0.08 km<sup>2</sup>, while the largest field covered an area of 14.8 km<sup>2</sup>. A striking contrast between the northern and southern portions of the PTB characterized the spatial distribution of large <i>aufeis</i> fields. All large (>0.5 km<sup>2</sup>) and 13 persisting <i>aufeis</i> fields were located along broad valleys in the northern portion. Furthermore, a multi-temporal comparison between 1994 and 2023 shows that the number of remaining <i>aufeis</i> fields in autumn varied between 8 and 29, with a maximum in 2019. Their total area ranged between about 0.3 km<sup>2</sup> in 1994 and 2023 to about 1.2 km<sup>2</sup> in 2015 and 2019. This study complements recent <i>aufeis</i> inventories from the Trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh and closes the gap to the Tibetan Plateau.