Glacier inventory and five decadal glacier response: A case study of Rongdo basin, Eastern Karakoram, Ladakh

Glaciers are one of the vital proxy indicators of contemporary climate change. In recent times, there has been a general trend of glacier retreat; however, the glacier’s reaction to climate change is variable within the Hindu Kush (HK) and Karakoram region. Considering the significance of this region’s glaciers to water availability, changes in glacier area and volume, climate change impacts, and their socio-economic impacts on the habitations living downstream, it becomes critical to evaluate the response of glaciers to climate change at a local level in this region. We present the response of glaciers of the Rongdo basin, eastern Karakoram region, to climate change for the last five decades based on the study carried out using satellite data and field observations. By analysis of the remote sensing data from CORONA, US Military Agency Photograph, Landsat series of satellites, and ASTER DEM, we created a detailed and updated inventory of the glaciers in the Rongdo basin and derived glacier area information for different time periods. Results exhibit that some of the glaciers in the study area have increased while others decreased over time, with a total deglaciation of 6.8% over the last decades. In general, glaciers indicate an inverse relationship between glacier size and area loss. However, there has been a state of expansion in the glacier cover that started somewhere after the 1990s to 2000 and continued up to 2020, thereby corroborating the Karakoram anomaly at a local level in concurrence with the earlier studies.