MONITORING GLACIER VARIATIONS IN THE SOUTHERN PATAGONIA ICEFIELD UTILIZING IMAGES LANDSAT 7 ETM+

Abstract

The monitoring of the variation in glacier areas is increasingly important with the apparent trend of global warming. One of the major ice sheets on the planet, the main glaciers of Southern Patagonia Icefield were mapped using a set of images obtained in 1973, 1976, 1979, 1986, 2005 and 2009 by the ETM + sensor onboard the Landsat 7 satellite. The images were calibrated to planetary radiance and reflectance, where the supervised classification of each image sought to obtain the physical limit of the snow with each glacier. Maps were generated with the terminal position of the glacier tongue for the dates analyzed. The results were compared with previous publications and showed peculiar behavior of each glacier, especially from the images of 1986, where there was a pattern of decrease in surface area of glaciers. And the temporal analysis will show the behavior of glaciers to the present day.