Interannual Rock Glacier Surface Elevation Changes using UAS in Great
Basin National Park, Nevada.
Abstract
Critical freshwater resources lying within mid-latitude mountain
glaciers are vulnerable to a rapidly changing climate. The Lehman Rock
Glacier is the only extant glacier mapped within the Great Basin
National Park in Nevada. As part of an effort to understand this
specialized alpine environment, we have been studying this area and
conducting observations with annual student research visitations since
2005. Deploying mixed methods including an embedded sensor network,
paleoclimate reconstructions, hydrological observations, and unmanned
aerial system (UAS) operations, our team has documented diverse evidence
of climate change over interannual to millennial scales. Starting in
2015, we conducted annual surveys of the rock glacier to measure
topographic changes. Initially, we used balloon-borne photogrammetry,
capturing 600+ images over about 0.1 km2 at an altitude of 500m above
ground level (AGL). Despite impartial terrain coverage (50-80%) caused
by limited control of the balloon rig in the air, digital elevation
modeling (DEM) differencing resolved a net volume loss of 5,300m3
between 2015 and 2016. Submission of a Certification Of Approval (COA)
granted our team permission to fly a UAV for the first time within the
National Park in 2018 and 2019 to map the rock glacier. UAS surveying
over successive days in August with > 80% horizontal and
vertical overlap helped achieved 100% coverage with 900+ photos. Using
previous year’s DEMs, we have optimized autonomous flight planning at
80m AGL and 168m AGL at 8.5mh and 20kmh, respectively. We will present
our most recent computations of the glacier changes from years 2018 and
2019 and discuss how UAS instrumentation techniques are helping us
observe changing glacier conditions at centimeter-scale resolution,
better understand ecosystem relationships, and improve capabilities to
model future landscapes all while mitigating mountain safety issues.