Monitoring of Historical Glacier Recession in Yulong Mountain by the Integration of Multisource Remote Sensing Data

Yulong Mountain, which is the southernmost snowcapped mountain in mainland Eurasia, has been confronted with significant glacier recession in the last decades due to global climate warming. The recession of these small-scale monsoonal temperate glaciers is a sensitive indicator of global warming. However, there have been few studies that have comprehensively monitored the historical glacier recession in Yulong Mountain area. This paper integrates multisource remote sensing data to monitor the glacial status on Yulong Mountain between 1957 and 2009. Integrating a topographic map, the long-term observed Landsat TM/ETM+ images, and multitemporal digital elevation model datasets, both the area change and regional mass balance of the Yulong glaciers are analyzed. According to the results, the area of the Yulong glaciers decreased from 11.57 to 4.55 km
²
at a rate of −0.14 km
²
yr
⁻¹
over the last 52 years between 1957 and 2009. The 1987–1999 specific mass balance was −0.31 ± 0.33 m yr
⁻¹
water equivalent, while the 1987–2008 mass balance was −0.27 ± 0.35 m yr
⁻¹
water equivalent. It can be interpreted from the results that the Yulong glaciers have experienced persistent glacier recession during the last decades. The glacier melting is still significant due to the continuously rising temperature. Furthermore, spatially heterogeneous glacier recession has been observed in this area. The glacier changes are spatially varied, which is probably due to the local temperature and precipitation, the glacier sizes, the terminus altitudes, and terrain factors. The influencing elements interacted with each other, and the climate conditions are the dominant factors affecting glacier status.