Dataset of glacier changes in Bugyai Kangri, eastern Tanggula Mountains during 1981-2000

Based on Landsat MSS/TM/OLI optical satellite remote sensing data from 1981 to 2020, visual interpretation was used to extract glacier and glacial lake boundaries in the Bugyai Kangri every ~5 years. Glacier area and length, as well as glacial lake area, were extracted at different times based on glacier/glacial lake boundaries. The vector layers of glacier and glacial lake boundaries are unified in the WGS1984 coordinate system and stored in ESRI Shape format; the attribute information such as glacier and glacial lake area is projected onto the UTM-Zone_46N coordinate system, and stored in MS Excel format. The area error of glaciers and glacial lakes was estimated using the pixel buffer method. Based on the 1980 Chinese historical topographic map, the 2000 SRTM DEM, and the 2014 and 2020 TanDEM data, the changes in glacier mass in Bugyai Kangri were calculated using geodetic methods. Before extracting changes in glacier mass, different DEM data were unified to a spatial resolution of 30 m and coordinate system UTM-Zone_46N, and spatial matching errors were corrected based on terrain factors. SRTM X-band data was used to exclude the influence of C-band radar snow penetration on the data results. Finally, the accuracy of glacier mass change was evaluated using the mean square error in glacier-free areas.