Evaluation of Hexagon Imagery for Regional Mass Balance Study in the Bhutan Himalayas

Salt Lake Community College Student Center

There is much uncertainty regarding the present and future state of Himalayan glaciers, which supply meltwater for river systems vital to more than 1.4 billion people living throughout Asia. Previous assessments of regional glacier mass balance in the Himalayas using various remote sensing and field-based methods give inconsistent results. In this study, declassified Hexagon stereo imagery is processed to generate a digital elevation model (DEM) in the Bhutan Himalayas. Results indicate that the Hexagon imagery database represents a largely untapped resource for understanding decadal scale patterns of mass balance in the region. Future research will utilize the imagery and DEMs to quantify changes in volume and extent of glaciers in the Bhutan Himalayas by comparing the historical imagery to more recent data and calculating changes in ice volume over an approximately 40 year period.