Mountain glaciers are excellent indicators of climate change and have an important role in the terrestrial water cycle and food security in many parts of the world. Glaciers are the major water source of rivers and lakes in the Nyainqentanglha Mountains (NM) region, where the glacier area has the second largest extent on the Tibetan Plateau. The potential of the high spatial resolution ZiYuan-3 (ZY-3) Three-Line-Array (TLA) stereo images to retrieve glacier mass balance has not been sufficiently explored. In this study, we optimized the procedure to extract a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) from ZY-3 TLA stereo images and estimated the geodetic mass balance of representative glaciers in the two typical areas of the NM using ZY-3 DEMs and the C-band Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) DEM in three periods, i.e., 2000-2013, 2013-2017 and 2000-2017. The results provide detailed information towards better understanding of glacier change and specifically show that: (1) with our new stereo procedure, ZY-3 TLA data can significantly increase point cloud density and decrease invalid data on the glacier surface map to generate a high resolution (5 m) glacier mass balance map; (2) the glacier mass balance in both the Western Nyainqentanglha Mountains (WNM) and Eastern Nyainqentanglha Mountains (ENM) was negative in 2000-2017, and experienced faster mass loss in recent years (2013-2017) in the WNM. Overall, the glaciers in the western and eastern NM show different change patterns since they are influenced by different climate regimes; the glacier mass balances in WNM was-0.22 ± 0.23 m w.e. a^-1 and-0.43 ± 0.06 m w.e. a^-1 in 2000-2013 and 2013-2017, respectively, while in 2000-2017, it was-0.30 ± 0.19 m w.e. a^-1 in the WNM and-0.56 ± 0.20 m w.e. a^-1 in the ENM; (3) in the WNM, the glaciers experienced mass loss in 2000-2013 and 2013-2017 in the ablation zone, while in the accumulation zone mass increased in 2000-2013 and a large mass loss occurred in 2013-2017; as regards the ENM, the glacier mass balance was negative in 2000-2017 in both zones; (4) glacier mass balance can be affected by the fractional abundance of debris and glacier slope; (5) the glacier mass balances retrieved by ZY-3 and TanDEM-X data agreed well in the ablation zone, while a large difference occurred in the accumulation zone because of the snow/firn penetration of the X-band SAR signal.

Mountain glaciers are sensitive to climate change and are thus relevant indicators of regional climate variability. In order to understand the dynamics of glaciers, retrieving glacier surface velocity is valuable in understanding physical processes in glaciers. We apply an image cross-correlation algorithm in the frequency domain to derive glacier velocity on the Yanong glacier between 2013 and 2018. The results indicate that the flow patterns are related to the terrain complexity. Yanong Glacier maximum velocity was 168 m/year at the elevation around 4700 meters. The surface velocity exceeded 100 m/year above the elevation of 4200 m, while above 5000 m the surface velocity fluctuated around 60 m/year along the main stream.

Glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau are an important indicator of climate change. Automatic glacier facies mapping utilizing remote sensing data is challenging due to the spectral similarity of supraglacial debris and the adjacent bedrock. Most of the available glacier datasets do not provide the boundary of clean ice and debris-covered glacier facies, while debris-covered glacier facies play a key role in mass balance research. The aim of this study was to develop an automatic algorithm to distinguish ice cover types based on multi-temporal satellite data, and the algorithm was implemented in a subregion of the Parlung Zangbo basin in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau. The classification method was built upon an automated machine learning approach: Random Forest in combination with the analysis of topographic and textural features based on Landsat-8 imagery and multiple digital elevation model (DEM) data. Very high spatial resolution Gao Fen-1 (GF-1) Panchromatic and Multi-Spectral (PMS) imagery was used to select training samples and validate the classification results. In this study, all of the land cover types were classified with overall good performance using the proposed method. The results indicated that fully debris-covered glaciers accounted for approximately 20.7% of the total glacier area in this region and were mainly distributed at elevations between 4600 m and 4800 m above sea level (a.s.l.). Additionally, an analysis of the results clearly revealed that the proportion of small size glaciers (< 1 km ² ) were 88.3% distributed at lower elevations compared to larger size glaciers (≥1 km ² ). In addition, the majority of glaciers (both in terms of glacier number and area) were characterized by a mean slope ranging between 20° and 30°, and 42.1% of glaciers had a northeast and north orientation in the Parlung Zangbo basin.

Mountain glaciers are one of the major fresh water resources. Glacier mass balance on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) can directly reflect local climate change and plays a crucial role in the terrestrial water cycle and food security of local people. In this study, we improved the procedure to analyze Three-Line-Array (TLA) stereo images to estimate the glaciers mass balance in Kangri Karpo mountains using Zi Yuan-3 (ZY-3) TLA data and C-band Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) in two periods, i.e. 2000-2013 and 2013-2017. The results showed that the mean mass balance of glaciers between 2000 and 2017 was -0.91 ± 0.02 m w.e. a^-1. The glaciers presented accelerated mass loss in recent years (2013-2017, -2.84 ±0.05 m w.e. a^-1), compared with the first decade in 21st (2000-2013, -1.59 ± 0.03 m w.e. a^-1), while the melt rate in debris-covered glaciers was larger than in clean-ice glaciers.