to emphasize those measurements of our local astrophysical laboratory that will best illuminate how these fundamental cosmic entities operate. Moreover, observations to date already indicate that the Saturn system is literally changing before our eyes. We anticipate that even more dramatic transformations in our neighborhood's astrophysical laboratory will be monitored by Cassini's instruments ...

Comprehensive research on glacier changes in the Tian Shan is available for the current decade; however, there is limited information about glacier investigations of previous decades and especially before the mid 1970s. The earliest stereo images from the Corona missions were acquired in the 1960s but existing studies dealing with these images focus on single glaciers or small areas only. We de...

In spring 2007, a large rock avalanche descended onto the Morsárjökull valley glacier in southeast Iceland, leaving one fifth of the glacier buried. The insulating effect of the deposit on the ice was quickly observed as a difference in the ablation between the exposed ice and that under the deposit. After three melt seasons, the ice surface under the deposit was 29 m above the surrounding glac...

In the course of glacier retreat, new glacier lakes can develop. As such lakes can be a source of natural hazards, strategies for predicting future glacier lake formation are important for an early planning of safety measures. In this article, a multi-level strategy for the identification of overdeepened parts of the glacier beds and, hence, sites with potential future lake formation, is presen...

Water level fluctuations of inland lakes are related to regional-scale climate changes, and reflect variations in evaporation, precipitation and glacier meltwater flowing into the lake area in its catchment. In this paper, Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) altimeter data and Landsat imagery (2002–09) are used to estimate Nam Co lake (Nyainqentanglha range, Tibetan Plateau) water ...

The assessment of glacier mass budget is crucial for assessing water reserves stored in glaciers. Derived glacier mass changes in the Muztag Ata and Kongur Tagh (MAKT) region in the eastern Pamir, northwestern China, is helpful in improving our knowledge of the dynamics of glaciers under a changing climate in High Mountain Asia. Here, glacier area and mass changes derived from remote sensing da...

During the Last Glaciation in Tasmania a large ice cap developed on the western edge of the Central Plateau and overlapped on to the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair area. Several reticulate lobes flowed from this source, with the largest northern outlet, the Mersey Glacier, covering an area of c. 282 km2• The Lake Ayr Valley was occupied by a smail diffiuent lobe of the Mersey Glacier, and the la...

Glacier hazards threaten societies in mountain regions worldwide. Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) pose risks to exposed and vulnerable populations and can be linked in part to long-term post-Little Ice Age climate change because precariously dammed glacial lakes sometimes formed as glaciers generally retreated after the mid-1800s. This paper provides an interdisciplinary and historical ana...

Digital elevation models (DEMs) are now frequently used to calculate elevation changes and regional mass balances of glaciers, for example in the Alps (Berthier and others, 2004; Paul and Haeberli, 2008; Huss and others, 2010), Alaska and Canada (Larsen and others, 2007; Schiefer and others, 2007; Berthier and others, 2010), Patagonia (Rignot and others, 2003) or High Mountain Asia (Surazakov a...

Very small glaciers (<0.5 km2) account for more than 80% of the total number of glaciers in midto low-latitude mountain ranges. Although their total area and volume is small compared to larger glaciers, they are a relevant component of the cryosphere, contributing to landscape formation, local hydrology, and sea-level rise. Worldwide glacier monitoring mostly focuses on medium-sized to large gl...