Comparative Analysis of Glacier Inventories of HKH Mountain Ranges within Pakistan for the Change Assessment

Abstract

Glaciers store the seventy five percent of world’s water and play an important role in freshwater resources. But due to increase in temperature the glaciers are melting worldwide. In Himalayan region of Pakistan, the glaciers are melting except a few glaciers are not melting elsewhere such as in Karakoram range, which is referred to as Karakoram anomaly. At local, regional, and global level fluctuations of glaciers can be investigated. Therefore, different international organizations for the assessment of glaciers have endorsed the idea of glacier inventory. According to different studies despite the importance of HKH region this region is lacking in glacier database. The objective of this study is to identify glaciers number and area of each catchment, according to glacier inventories that compiled the glacier database of HKH region (UIB) Pakistan. This study also identified the gaps and discrepancies found in glacier inventories, and comparison of glacier inventories to determine status of glaciers in HKH region (UIB) of Pakistan. The glacier inventories selected for this study was ICIMOD glacier inventory (2005), PMD glacier inventory (2011), WGI (2012), RGI (all versions), GLIMS glacier database (2021). The number and area of glaciers of each catchment calculated according to each glacier inventory. Moreover, all versions of RGI compared with each other in terms of glacier number and area, and also compared the glacier database with each other submitted in GLIMS inventory. The results of this study revealed that due to presence of discrepancies in glacier database such as duplication of glacier IDs in GLIMS database, and utilization of glacier outlines of other glacier inventory as in WGI, and RGI utilized glacier outlines of previous versions, the status of glaciers in Pakistan such as whether the glaciers number and area increasing or decreasing could not find out. This study also suggested guidelines for future state of art glacier inventory for HKH region Pakistan. This study recommended the compilation of glacier inventory for HKH region of Pakistan thorough automated methods