Back to news
12 May 2015 | News

The International Glacier symposium in Kathmandu

1 min Read

70% Complete

 

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) through its Cryosphere Initiative hosted the first International Glacier Symposium (IGS) in Kathmandu. The week-long event took place from 1 to 6 March, 2015. The IGS brought together scientists from around the world and provided a forum to discuss measurements, modeling and interpretation of glaciological and cryospheric changes in high mountain Asia.

Poster presentation highlighting glaciers of the past, present, future and their melt processes, hazards and impacts on people were showcased during the symposium to facilitate regional and local knowledge sharing on glacier.

“Identification of critical glaciers in the Nepal Himalayas inferred from Landsat data” was one of the posters presented and highlighted study findings conducted by ICMOD to identify critical glaciers which indicated prominent effect on the glacier environment of Nepal Himalaya. The images acquired via Landsat generated four decades of glacier data ranging from 1980s to 2010 identified 27 glaciers as critical. The findings were based on three criteria: physical aspects such as area change, terminus retreat, elevation shift, glacier fragmentation; risk and hazards to livelihood, settlements, infrastructures, etc.; and climatic aspects (temperature, precipitation).

The posters showed the classifications of critical glaciers — clean-ice, debris-covered and lake associated glaciers — to estimate recession loss and its dynamics in each decades. These classification result shows that in clean-ice glaciers, the area change and shift in terminus was noticeable in all decades; however, a prominent loss and thinning in glacier area has more influence in small sized clean-ice glaciers. Variability in retreat rate independent of glacier size was noticed in debris-covered glaciers. Similarly, lake associated glaciers showed a substantial retreat at their snout in all decades, suggesting the influence of lakes on glacier retreat. Shrinking and fragmentation of ice bodies over the past three decades were also visible in the results. The study concluded that glacier area loss is likely to accelerate in coming decades with the enlargement of glacial lakes and points out the need for continuous study of critical glaciers to understand the changes over time to predict water availability in terms of long-term glacial loss and the reduction of glacial hazards.

Stay current

Stay up to date on what’s happening around the HKH with our most recent publications and find out how you can help by subscribing to our mailing list.

Sign Up

related contents

Continue exploring this topic

12 Dec 2016 News
“A Song for Barpak” Takes ICIMOD Prize at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival

With stirring images and stories from before and after the devastating 2015 Nepal earthquake, director Pradip Pokhrel conveys a powerful ...

11 May 2017 Himalica
Joint Monitoring of Himalica Pilot Project in Tsirang, Bhutan

During the visit, the joint monitoring team interacted with goat and vegetable value chain groups formed by Himalica and a ...

22 Sep 2017 Solar Pumps
Nepali Engineers Explore New Irrigation Systems

Thirty irrigation engineers—10 of them women—from DOI participated in the training. Titled Energy Efficient Irrigation Systems using Solar Pumps, the ...

18 Dec 2015 HKPL
Regional consultation on Karakoram-Pamir-Wakhan Landscape Initiative

A regional consultation workshop on programme development for Karakoram-Pamir-Wakhan Landscape Initiative jointly organised by the Wakhan Corridor Initiative and the ...

24 Jan 2019 HI-RISK
Regional water-related disaster experts discuss gaps in flood early warning communication and potential solutions

In his welcome remarks, Basanta Shrestha, Director of Strategic Cooperation at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), emphasized ...

12 Oct 2015 News
Team visits climate smart Indian cardamom farms

  Wanting to know more about sustainable management practices of cardamom produc-tion, a team of six from the International Centre for ...

21 Jul 2016 News
Remote Sensing for REDD+ MRV for Myanmar Officials

A three-day training workshop on “Measuring and Monitoring of Forests in the context of REDD+ MRV (Measurement, Reporting and Verification)” ...