Unlocking archival maps of the Hornsund fjord area for monitoring glaciers of the Sørkapp Land peninsula, Svalbard

Abstract

Abstract. Archival maps are an invaluable source of information on the state of glaciers in polar zones and are very often basic research material for analysing changes in their geometry. However, basing a reliable comparative analysis on them requires they be standardised and precisely matched against modern-day cartographic materials. This can be achieved effectively using techniques and tools from the field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The research objective was to accurately register archival topographic maps of the area surrounding the Hornsund fjord (southern Spitsbergen) published by the Polish Academy of Sciences, and to evaluate their potential for use in studying changes in the geometry of glaciers in the western part of the Sørkapp Land peninsula in 1961–90. Comparing the 1961 and 1990 data, glacier surfaces lowered by about 80–85 m for the largest land-terminating glaciers of the peninsula, and by up to more than 90 m for tidewater glaciers (above the line marking their 1984 extents). The dataset is now available from the Zenodo web portal: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4573130 (Dudek and Pętlicki, 2021).

Paraglacial transformation and ice‐dammed lake dynamics in a high Arctic glacier foreland, Gåsbreen, Svalbard

“…Due to its specific terrain settings and the existence of a mountain barrier limiting the advance of the glacier and causing its pilling up on the slopes, Gåsbreen's frontal retreat rate before the 1990s, was relatively small in comparison with glaciers situated on the Wedel‐Jarlsberg Land (Janina et al, 1984; Reder, 1996; Rodzik et al, 2013), in the central part of Spitsbergen (M. W. Ewertowski et al, 2019; Holmlund, 2021; Kavan, 2020; Małecki, 2016; Rachlewicz et al, 2007), in Kaffiøyra (Sobota & Lankauf, 2010) or further north in the vicinity of Ny‐Ålesund (Nuth et al, 2007). Following climate trends as recorded in meteorological stations across Spitsbergen an acceleration in the retreat rate of Gåsbreen was measured since the 1990s, which is consistent with similar recession styles observed for other land terminating glaciers in the region of western Sørkapp Land as well as further north of Spitsbergen (Dudek & Pętlicki, 2021; Kohler et al, 2007).…”

“…Thematic layers of the map—contours, elevation points, rivers, and lakes—were digitized, and subsequently, after finding their shifts in relation to the data from 2010, they were registered based on triangulation and topographic points. This allowed for cartographic compilation and integration of vector layers from the 1960s with data from other years (Dudek & Pętlicki, 2021).…”

“…Created DEM was validated against the pre‐existing 2010 elevation dataset of the NPI which was used as a reference dataset throughout the study (NPI, 2014). The average elevation difference between the 1990 and 1960 DEMs on ice‐free areas with slopes inclined less than 20° was 2.28 m with a standard deviation of 3.18 m (Dudek & Pętlicki, 2021).…”