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| Titel |
The length of the world's glaciers – a new approach for the global calculation of center lines |
| VerfasserIn |
H. Machguth, M. Huss |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| ISSN |
1994-0416
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| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: The Cryosphere ; 8, no. 5 ; Nr. 8, no. 5 (2014-09-19), S.1741-1755 |
| Datensatznummer |
250116316
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/tc-8-1741-2014.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Glacier length is an important measure of glacier geometry. Nevertheless,
global glacier inventories are mostly lacking length data. Only recently
semi-automated approaches to measure glacier length have been developed and
applied regionally. Here we present a first global assessment of glacier
length using an automated method that relies on glacier surface slope,
distance to the glacier margins and a set of trade-off functions. The method
is developed for East Greenland, evaluated for East Greenland as well as for
Alaska and eventually applied to all ~ 200 000 glaciers around the
globe. The evaluation highlights accurately calculated glacier length where
digital elevation model (DEM) quality is high (East Greenland) and limited accuracy on low-quality DEMs
(parts of Alaska). Measured length of very small glaciers is subject to a
certain level of ambiguity. The global calculation shows that only about
1.5% of all glaciers are longer than 10 km, with Bering Glacier
(Alaska/Canada) being the longest glacier in the world at a length of
196 km. Based on the output of our algorithm we derive global and regional
area–length scaling laws. Differences among regional scaling parameters
appear to be related to characteristics of topography and glacier mass
balance. The present study adds glacier length as a key parameter to global
glacier inventories. Global and regional scaling laws might prove beneficial
in conceptual glacier models. |
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