EVALUATION AND CUSTOMIZATION OF GLACIER MASS BALANCE IN GEOSPATIAL ENVIRONMENT Thesis submitted to the Andhra University, Visakhapatnam in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of Master of Technology in Remote Sensing and GIS ANDHRA UNIVERSITY Submitted By: Mansi Puri Supervised By: Dr. Praveen Kumar Thakur Dr. Vaibhav Garg Scientist/Engineer‘SE’ Scientist/Engineer‘SD’ Water Resources Department Water Resources Department Indian Institute of Remote Sensing Indian Institute of Remote Sensing Dehradun Dehradun Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, ISRO Department of Space, Govt. of India Dehradun – 248001 Uttarakhand, India (August, 2013) CERTIFICATE This is to certify that Ms. Mansi Puri has carried out her Project entitled “Evaluation and Customization of Glacier Mass balance in Geospatial Environment”, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Master of Technology in Remote Sensing and GIS at Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS) during August 2011- August 2013. The work has been carried out under the supervision of Dr. Praveen Kumar Thakur ‘Scientist – SE’, Water Resource Department, IIRS, ISRO and Dr. Vaibhav Garg ‘Scientist- SD’, Water Resource Department, IIRS, ISRO. Dr. Praveen Kumar Thakur Dr. Vaibhav Garg Scientist ‘SE’ Scientist ‘SD’ Water Resources Department Water Resources Department Dr. S.P. Aggarwal Scientist ‘SF’, Head Water Resources Department Dr. Y.V.N Krishna Murthy Dr. S.K. Saha Director Dean (Academics) IIRS, Dehradun IIRS, Dehradun ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is my indeed pleasure to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Y.V. N. Krishna Murthy, Director IIRS for providing excellent research environment, motivation, support to carry out this research work. I would like to gratefully acknowledge Dr. S.P. Aggarwal, Scientist ‘SF’, Head Water Resources Department and Dr. S.K. Saha, Scientist ‘SG’ and Group Director Earth Resources and System Studies and Dean Academics for giving valuable suggestions and evaluating our research project time to time and encourage our spirits to work in a right direction successfully. I take this opportunity to express my deep and profound sense of respect and heartfelt thanks to my supervisor Mr. Praveen Kumar Thakur, Scientist /Engr. ‘SE’ for providing his expert guidance, impeccable advises for solving problem, inspiration and support throughout project work. His constant and timely supervision and encouragement helped me a lot in completing my project work at right time. I would like to give my sincere thanks to Dr. Bhaskar R. Nikam, Scientist ‘SD’, Dr. Viabhav Garg, Scientist ‘SD’, Mr. Arpit Chouksey, Scientist ‘SC’ Water Resources Department IIRS Dehradun for providing valuable suggestions to improve my project and representation skills. I would also like to give heartfelt gratitude to Mrs. Shefali Aggarwal, Scientist ‘SF’ and M.Tech, course coordinator for scheduling and coordinating our M.Tech Project. I would like to thanks Andhra University who give me opportunity to pursue this course. I have been highly motivated and supported by all my friends during my project work in IIRS. I would like to give Special thanks to Mr. Rashmit Singh Sukhmani Scientist ‘SC’, Anupriya, Sivi, Ben, Taibang, Joyson, and Moa for immense cooperation and establishing friendly and homely environment for me to live in IIRS. I would like to give sincere thanks to my M. Tech classmates Anudeep, Tarul, Rajtantra and Suman. I would like to dedicate this M.Tech thesis to my amazingly loving and supportive parents and elder Brother and Sister who have always been with me and encourage paving my way out in difficult situation. At last I express my deep love to this institute and gratefulness to all the faculties who imparted me each and every bit of their valuable knowledge Place: - Dehradun Date: - 19 August 2013 Mansi Puri i ABSTRACT Glaciers are the fresh water source of India which is showing a continuous change in their area and volume. But the change is not spatially or temporally uniform. As per the literature review most of the Indian Himalayas are retreating due to climate change. So, it is necessary to monitor the status or health of Glaciers. The most viable and important parameter which show glacier health is the Mass balance. Change in the mass balance easily access that whether glacier are advancing or retreating depending value of mass balance. This study focus on Estimation of Glacier Mass balance by two methods Accumulation Area Ratio Method and Geodetic Method for monitoring change in glacier with the help remote sensing. This study establishes a mathematical model among the actual mass balance , total glacier extent and accumulation area collected in between 2002-2010 on Chhota Shigri Glacier, which result as a linear relationship x= 0.0386*y – 2.5007, where x = mass balance and y = AAR. With the coefficient of correlation R2 = 0.95. The study also deals with mapping of Accumulation and Ablation zone with Optical, Thermal and Microwave Remote Sensing, using NDSI, NDSTI, Band Ratio, LST and Backscattering value which further used to calculate AAR and r mass balance of glaciers over a time series. The actual and satellite derived mass balance are comparable and shows good correlation. The value of AAR ranges between 0.29 to 0.72. The mass balance also ranges in between -1.4 m w.e and 0.25 m w.e. This study gives an RMSE error of 0.038 of mass balance evaluated through actual and remote sensing data. In Geodetic Method, One DEM generated from Base map of 40 meter contour interval and another DEM from SRTM resample at 30 meters are used to generate a height difference map which is then converted into mass balance in water equivalent. The Mass balance is -1 calculated over 36 years (1966-2002) has average positive value of 0.30±1.67m w.e.yr . This study also focus on the customization of Mass balance by both geodetic and AAR method in terms of open source image processing tool which will provide an aid to estimate Mass balance independently as there is need to map and estimate the glacier mass balance to understand the climate variability. Since very less work on glacier has been done till now. To ease somewhat manual work of image processing python is chosen to be one of the programming languages so that non programmer can understand the process. The Results obtained from tool is comparable and matching with the processing done with other Image processing software. Keywords: - AAR - Accumulation Area Ratio, ELA – Equilibrium Line Altitude, NDSI – Normalized Difference Snow Index, NDSTI – Normalized Difference Snow Thermal Index, LST – Land Surface Temperature. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................... I ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................ II TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................................... III LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................ VII LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................. X 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Evolution of Glaciers .......................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Glacier: Fresh water source ................................................................................................. 1 1.3 Glacier distribution in India ................................................................................................ 2 1.4 What are Glaciers? .............................................................................................................. 4 1.4.1 Glacier formation ......................................................................................................... 4 1.4.2 Glacier Zones ............................................................................................................... 5 1.4.2.1 Zone of Accumulation............................................................................................... 5 1.4.2.2 Zone of Ablation ....................................................................................................... 5 1.4.2.3 Equilibrium line ........................................................................................................ 6 1.4.2.4 Snout or terminus position ........................................................................................ 6 1.5 Mass balance ....................................................................................................................... 6 1.6 Role of Remote Sensing in Glacier mass balance ............................................................... 6 1.7 Problem definition ............................................................................................................... 7 1.7.1 Research Questions ...................................................................................................... 8 1.7.2 Research Objectives ..................................................................................................... 8 1.8 Organization Of Thesis ..................................................................................................... 8 1.8.1 AAR Method ...............................................................................................................