Inventory of Norwegian glaciers

• Main Authors: Andreassen, Liss M, Winsvold, Solveig H, Paul, Frank, Hausberg, Jon E
• Other Authors: Andreassen, L M ( Liss M ), Winsvold, S H ( Solveig H )
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate 2012
• Subjects: Institute of Geography; 910 Geography & travel; Norway; glacier; Northern Norway
• Online Access: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/73855/; https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/73855/1/2012_PaulF_rapport2012_38_Kopie_.pdf; http://webby.nve.no/publikasjoner/rapport/2012/rapport2012_38.pdf; https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-73855

This inventory of the glaciers in mainland Norway in book form consists of two parts: a text section with background information, description of the methods used and main results, and a map and table section that includes all identified glaciers. To derive this new inventory satellite images from the Landsat sensors from the period 1999-2006 were analysed. The sui- tability of a semi-automatic band-ratio method was first applied to map glaciers in a test region in Jotunheimen, before the method was applied to map all glaciers in Norway. All automatically mapped snow and ice polygons were visually inspected using composites of satellite image bands, digital topographic maps and orthophotos where available. The po- lygons were manually classified as ‘glaciers’, ‘possible snowfields’ or ‘snow’. Manual corrections for debris cover, glacier- lake interfaces, clouds or cast shadow were made where necessary. All polygons to be included in this new inventory were assigned a unique ID. Glacier complexes were divided into glacier units using drainage divides. Many smaller polygons which had been classified as possible snowfields due to size, shape or due to uncertainty regarding ice content were not as- signed IDs and were therefore not included in this inventory book. Glacier names were assigned both to individual glacier units and to glacier complexes. To be consistent we used the spelling from the digital N50 topographic maps produced by the Norwegian Mapping Authority, although in some cases these are different to those used in the previous inventories. In total 2534 glaciers (3143 glacier units) were defined in the new inventory. Of these 1252 glaciers (1575 glacier units) were in southern Norway and 1282 (1568 glacier units) were in northern Norway. The total glacier area is 2692 km2 ± 81 km2 (using ± 3% as uncertainty), the larger part, 1523 km2 (57%), is located in southern Norway, and 1169 km2 (43%) in northern Norway. In addition, about 400 polygons classified as ‘possible snowfield’, and without glacier ID, ...