Surface Characteristics, Elevation Change, and Velocity of High-Arctic Valley Glacier from Repeated High-Resolution UAV Photogrammetry

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are being increasingly used in glaciology demonstrating their potential for the generation of high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) that can be further used for the evaluation of glacial processes in detail. Such investigations are especially important for the evaluation of surface changes of small valley glaciers, which are not well-represented in lower-resolution satellite-derived products. In this study, we performed two UAV surveys at the end of the ablation season in 2019 and 2021 on Waldemarbreen, a High-Arctic glacier in NW Svalbard. We derived the mean annual glacier surface velocity of 5.3 m. The estimated mean glacier surface elevation change from 2019 to 2021 was −1.46 m a−1 which corresponds to the geodetic mass balance (MB) of −1.33 m w.e. a−1. The glaciological MB for the same period was −1.61 m w.e. a−1. Our survey includes all Waldemarbreen and demonstrates the efficiency of high-resolution DEMs produced from UAV photogrammetry for the reconstruction of changes in glacier surface elevation and velocity. We suggest that glaciological and geodetic MB methods should be used complementary to each other.

Keywords

• unmanned aerial vehicle
• glacier velocity
• geodetic and glaciological mass balance
• structure from motion
• feature tracking
• Waldemarbreen