Aldegondabreen glacier change since 1910 from structure-from-motion photogrammetry of archived terrestrial and aerial photographs: utility of a historic archive to obtain century-scale Svalbard glacier mass losses

Abstract

Photogrammetric reconstructions of the Aldegondabreen glacier on Svalbard from 17 archival terrestrial oblique photographs taken in 1910 and 1911 reveal a past volume of 1373.7 ± 78.2 · 106 m3; almost five times greater than its volume in 2016. Comparisons to elevation data obtained from aerial and satellite imagery indicate a relatively unchanging volume loss rate of − 10.1 ± 1.6 · 106 m3 a−1 over the entire study period, while the rate of elevation change is increasing. At this rate of volume loss, the glacier may be almost non-existent within 30 years. If the changes of Aldegondabreen are regionally representative, it suggests that there was considerable ice loss over the entire 1900s for the low elevation glaciers of western Svalbard. The 1910/11 reconstruction was made from a few of the tens of thousands of archival terrestrial photographs from the early 1900s that cover most of Svalbard. Further analysis of this material would give insight into the recent history and future prospects of the archipelago's glaciers. Photogrammetric reconstructions of this kind of material require extensive manual processing to produce good results; for more extensive use of these archival imagery, a better processing workflow would be required.

Recent contrasting behaviour of mountain glaciers across the European High Arctic revealed by ArcticDEM data

“…ArcticDEM data are a useful tool in glacier monitoring and have been used previously in various glaciological applications (e.g. Barr et al 2018;Zheng et al, 2018;Błaszczyk et al, 2019;Szafraniec and Dobiński, 2020;Holmlund, 2020;Elagina et al, 2021). However, the data suffer from several problems, making their use in glacier elevation change analysis challenging over some areas.…”

“…This might have a large impact on the landscape, fjord systems, land hydrology, and ecology, among others (e.g. Milner et al, 2017;Huss and Hock, 2018;Strzelecki et al, 2018;2020;Cauvy-Fraunié and Dangles, 2019;Torsvik et al, 2019;Hopwood et al, 2020).…”

“…Recent progress in large-scale glacier mass balance studies, utilizing climate modelling, satellite altimetry, gravimetry, and photogrammetry, has fundamentally improved our knowledge on the general trends of glacier change in the Arctic and the contribution of its ice masses to the global sea-level rise (e.g. Moholdt et al, 2012;Box et al, 2018;Noël et al, 2018;2020;Wouters et al, 2019;van Pelt et al, 2019). These studies might have a relatively coarse spatial resolution (≥ 1 km) and, thus, more limited coverage of the smallest (e.g.…”

Recent contrasting behaviour of mountain glaciers across the European High Arctic revealed by ArcticDEM data

“…ArcticDEM data are a useful tool in glacier monitoring and were previously 125 successfully utilized in various glaciological applications (e.g. Barr et al 2018;Zheng et al, 2018;Błaszczyk et al, 2019;Szafraniec and Dobiński, 2020;Holmlund, 2020;Elagina et al, 2021). However, its data suffer from several problems, making their use in glacier elevation change analysis challenging over some areas.…”

Halving of Swiss glacier volume since 1931 observed from terrestrial image photogrammetry

“…Large-scale changes throughout the 1900s are however still largely unknown. Recently, photogrammetric studies reconstructing glacier surface geometries for the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries have emerged (Mertes et al, 2017;Midgley and Tonkin, 2017;Girod et al, 2018;Dehecq et al, 2020;Holmlund, 2021), partially revealing large discrepancies when compared to model-based estimates (Holmlund and Holmlund, 2019;Belart et al, 2020;Geyman et al, 2022). For a better understanding of the response of glaciers to a changing climate, more historic data to understand these discrepancies are essential.…”