Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) Database at NSIDC
Abstract
Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) is an international project tasked with surveying a majority of the world's estimated 160,000 glaciers with data collected by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument aboard the EOS Terra spacecraft and the Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+). With National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) funding, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has developed the GLIMS glacier database. The database includes temporal measurements of glacier length, area, boundaries, topography, surface velocity vectors, and snowline elevation. The database design, data transfer specification, and ingest module are complete. Simple user interfaces for data submission and ordering are being tested. We are working closely with the United States Geological Survey on the development of GLIMS analysis software called GLIMSView. New funding from NASA, expected to begin in the next few months, will include support to: populate the database with new analyses from the world- wide network of GLIMS Regional Centers, add historical observations from the Former Soviet Union and China, enhance the user interface with an open systems GIS approach to make the data available, and validate the utility and quality of the database for glaciological science through selected regional scientific assessments. This paper describes these recent developments and new plans for GLIMS. The GLIMS database will provide an easy-to-use and widely accessible service for the glaciological community and other users needing information about the world's glaciers. http://www.glims.org/ and http://nsidc.org/data/glims/
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2003
- Bibcode:
- 2003AGUFM.C11C0837R
- Keywords:
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- 1640 Remote sensing;
- 1827 Glaciology (1863);
- 1863 Snow and ice (1827);
- 1894 Instruments and techniques