Tien Shan glacier's recession since the end of 19th century and during last 60 years by land instrumental, aerial photo and satellite remote sensing data

Tien Shan is one of the largest mountain systems in the World with glaciated area of more than 17,000 km² and counts a significant impact on distribution of water resources and hydroelectric potential in Central Asia. Tien Shan glaciers are the basic reserve for river flow in the extremely dry years, being the only renewable clear water resource in the region integrating four central Asian countries and western territory of China. The current research presents the estimation on area distribution, volume and temporal changes over 100 glaciers at the northern and central Tien Shan located in five different climatic and topographic basins. The response of glaciers to the warm/cool and wet/dry annual to decadal conditions has been evaluated by composition 1:25 000 and 1:100 000 scales DEMs developed on the time series repeated aerial photographs derived between 1943 and 1991 and high resolution SAR images from RADARSAT and ERS. In the process of satellite imagery and high-resolution DEM development, different topographic parameters for each node of the DEM grids (e.g. surface type, altitude, slope angles, slope aspect, slope curvature, etc.) were calculated. The Tien Shan glacier recession since 19th century estimated based on the Russian topographic survey data. Last decade glacier changes have been evaluated using high-resolution ASTER and Landsat-7 satellite, visible and infrared imagery coordinated with the in situ measurements. Radio-echo sounding measurements were used for assessment of glacier volumes changes. The global climatic and regional environmental changes during the last century adversely affected regime of the Tien Shan glaciers causing their large recession. Only between 1943 and 2003 Tien Shan glaciers lost about 30% in glacierized surface area. The largest glacier recession observed in the northern and central and eastern Tien Shan where glaciers retreated up to 3 km and their surface declined over 30 m.