Monitoring glaciers in the Chenab basin with SBAS InSAR technology.

The Chenab basin is located in northwest India and eastern Pakistan. Glaciers in Chenab basin, as local freshwater resources, are very important to the regional ecological environment and development. At the same time, SBAS InSAR can monitor the deformation of the ground for a long time, the monitoring accuracy can reach mm level, and can obtain the time series change of deformation, whcih provides a new idea and method for glacier detection. In this study, the deformation from SBAS InSAR was combined with glacial area data to study the glacial changes in Chenab Basin. Sentinel-1 and Landsat series images were used to obtain the deformation and change in the area of glaciers by SBAS InSAR and the semi-automated method. The results showed that glaciers in the Chenab basin retreated rapidly, especially in the past ten years. The glacier area decreased by 88.05 km² in 1990∼2000 and 118.86 km² in 2000∼2010, and the glacier area decreased by 236.01 km² in 2010∼2020, which was the largest rate of change of 9.49%. Moreover, glacial deformation decreased in 2020, and the deformation rate ranged from -146.3 mm/a to 119.52 mm/a. Most glaciers had deformation rates between -50 mm/a and 50 mm/a. Influenced by precipitation and temperature, glacial deformation in the Chenab basin started to change in August, the maximum accumulation was 6,828.43 mm, and the minimum ablation was -20,656.41 mm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]