Interannual Dynamics of Ice Cliff Populations on Debris-Covered Glaciers From Remote Sensing Observations and Stochastic Modeling.

ABSTRACT: Ice cliffs are common on debris-covered glaciers and have relatively high melt rates due to their direct exposure to incoming radiation. Previous studies have shown that their number and relative area can change considerably from year to year, but this variability has not been explored, in part because available cliff observations are irregular. Here, we systematically mapped and tracked ice cliffs across four debris-covered glaciers in High Mountain Asia for every late ablation season from 2009 to 2019 using high-resolution multi-spectral satellite imagery. We then quantified the processes occurring at the feature scale to train a stochastic birth-death model to represent the cliff population dynamics. Our results show that while the cliff relative area can change by up to 20% from year t

SUBMITTER: Kneib M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9285626 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature