Glacier Surface Motion Distribution in Muztagh Ata Region during the winter of 2009

Muztagh Ata region is one of the glacier concentrated distribution area in eastern Pamir, China. The long-term monitoring of the ice not only would be helpful for the water resource investigation, but also benefit for the climate change research. The SAR imagery acquired by ALOS/PALSAR in January 14 and March 1 in 2009 with was employed in ice surface motion extraction along with the improving pixel-tracking algorithm. The accurate ice motion was obtained by precisely removing the global deformation caused by orbit and sensor attitude, as well as topography effect introduced by the complex terrain. The spatial resolution of final results is about 23 m and its accuracy is 0.5 m/46 day. The ice motion distribution generally indicates that the flow velocity in accumulation part is faster than that in ablation or terminal part. The ice motion has a relatively positive correlation with topography and some small glaciers show strong activities. The accurate motion monitoring of mountain glacier would be propitious to glacier dynamic study and ice flow related disaster prediction. Furthermore, it would provide an effective way for the investigation of glacier resources in China.