Rock glacier mapped by a first person in Hindu Kush Himalayas (M1 mapping).

The dataset shows a layer of rock glaciers mapped comprehensively by a first person, using the polygon tool in Google Earth. Therefore, 4000 randomly distributed sample polygons have been created over the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, and each sample polygon has been examined for rock glaciers by two different individuals to increase confidence in the mapping.

Date ( Publication ): 2014-07-25

Originator

ICIMOD - Mr. Marc-Olivier Schmid ( Research Analyst )

Nepal

977-1-5275222

Point of contact

ICIMOD - Dr. Dorothea Stumm ( Sr. Glaciologist and Permafrost Project Coordinator )

Nepal

977-1-5275222

Originator

ICIMOD - Mr. Prashant Baral ( Intern )

Nepal

977-1-5275222

Originator

ICIMOD - Ms. Sonika Shahi ( Intern )

Nepal

977-1-5275222

Originator

ICIMOD - Ms. Tanuja Shrestha ( Intern )

Nepal

977-1-5275222

Purpose: Rock glaciers are used as a proxy, because they are visual indicators of permafrost, often occurring near the lowermost regional occurrence of permafrost in mountains. They can be delineated based on high-resolution remote sensing imagery freely available on Google Earth. M1 denotes that this is one of the two layers of comprehensive mappings for all 4000 randomly distributed samples.

Status: Completed

Maintenance and update frequency: As needed

( Theme )

Rock Glacier
Permafrost
Cryosphere
Glacier

Keywords ( Place )

Hindu Kush Himalayan Region
HKH

Use limitation: Copyright

Use limitation: Copyright

Access constraints: Copyright

Use constraints: Copyright

Spatial representation type: Vector

Metadata language: eng

Character set: UTF8

Topic category

Geoscientific information

Reference system identifier: WGS 1984

Distributor

ICIMOD -

977-1-5275222

OnLine resource: The Cryosphere ( WWW:LINK-1.0-http--related )
Paper submitted to The Cryosphere by M.-O. Schmid et al. in 2014, Assessment of permafrost distribution maps in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region using rock glaciers mapped in Google Earth.

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Statement: Manually mapped outlines of rock glaciers based on high resolution Google Earth images is a subjective method. In many sample squares, visual detection of rock glaciers was not possible due to poor image quality, excessive snow or cloud coverage in the whole or any part of the sample.