Data: An Assessment of Glacier Inventories for the Third Pole Region (1990-2015)-National Tibetan Plateau Data Center

Using the analytic hierarchy process, this study selects eight assessment factors and assesses the comprehensive quality of eight glacier inventories of the TPR by grading. By merging products of the eight glacier inventories in terms of best-quality assessment units, A new glacier inventory product of best comprehensive quality was derived for the entire TPR. The new product greatly promotes the quality of a single glacier inventory for the entire TPR.

The database provides: (1) glacier information inherited from the original inventories including longitude, latitude, area, elevation, slope, aspect, acquisition time of the remote-sensing data; (2) information of the assessment including normalized index values of the eight assessment factors, integrated index values and grades of scenes for all of the eight inventories, which is recorded in terms of individual glaciers. It would meet the needs not only for the potential users who need to know the best glacier inventory of comprehensive quality of a region, but also for those who prefer to get information on a single quality or factor (e.g. seasonal snowcover) of a given glacier inventory.

File naming and required software

RGI: Randolph Glacier Inventory;
GGI18: Updated GAMDAM (Glacier Area Mapping for Discharge in Asian Mountains) Glacier Inventory;
CGI-2: the Second Chinese Glacier Inventory;
HKHGI: Glacier Inventory of the Hindu Kush–Himalayan Region compiled by ICIMOD (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development);
WHGI: Glacier Inventory for the Western Himalayas established by the GlobGlacier project;
KPGI: Glacier Inventory for the Karakoram and Pamir region;
PGI-2: the Second Glacier Inventory of Pakistan;
SETPGI: Glacier Inventory for the Southeastern Tibetan Plateau;
mergy_product: a merged glacier inventory product of the best comprehensive quality.

Data Citations Data citation guideline What's data citation?

Cite as:

He, X., Zhou, S. (2022). Data: An Assessment of Glacier Inventories for the Third Pole Region (1990-2015). National Tibetan Plateau Data Center, DOI: 10.11888/Cryos.tpdc.272302. CSTR: 18406.11.Cryos.tpdc.272302. (Download the reference： RIS | Bibtex )

Using this data, the data citation is required to be referenced and the related literatures are suggested to be cited.

References literature

1.He, X., & Zhou, S. (2022). An Assessment of Glacier Inventories for the Third Pole Region. Frontiers in Earth Science, 10, 848007. doi: 10.3389/feart.2022.848007 (View Details | Download )

Support Program

the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No:2017YFA0603101)

Copyright & License

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License： This work is licensed under an Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)