Advances in Remote Sensing Technology and the Three Poles

13 Fluctuations of Kolahoi Glacier, Kashmir Valley, Its Assessment With Tree-Rings of Pinus wallichiana and Comparable Satellite Imageries and Field Survey Records

Uttam Pandey^1,2,*, Santosh K. Shah^1,*, and Nivedita Mehrotra¹

¹ Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, 53 University Road, Lucknow 226 007, India ² Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Japan^* Corresponding author

13.1 Introduction

The change in climatic conditions in the higher elevated mountainous regions affects various environmental conditions. Among these, the fluctuation of glaciers is of growing concern for glaciologists, climate policy-makers, and of interest to the general public. These concerns arise from the fact that glaciers control the hydrological condition of downstream inhabitants and various other ecosystems. The glacier fluctuation is mostly associated with the change of area, ice volume, and mass and length of the glacier, and is considered as direct evidence of climate change and its impact on the environment. In the twentieth century, worldwide glaciers are showing higher retreat and loss in glacier mass (Zemp et al., 2015). It is reported that the global temperature may rise by 1.5°C in the next two to three decades (Shukla et al. 2019), which may trigger the melting of the glacial ice in the polar areas and the glaciers of high-elevation Himalaya regions. In the last few decades, temperatures increased at a higher rate and accelerated the rate of glacier retreat ...