Deriving a year 2000 glacier inventory for New Zealand from the existing 2016 inventory

Abstract

Due to adverse snow and cloud conditions, only a few inventories are available for the maritime glaciers in New Zealand. These are difficult to compare as different approaches and baseline data have been used to create them. In consequence, glacier fluctuations in New Zealand over the past two decades are only known for a few glaciers based on field observations. Here we present the results of a new inventory for the ‘year 2000’ (some scenes are from 2001 and 2002) that is based on glacier outlines from a recently published inventory for the year 2016 and allowed consistent change assessment for nearly 3000 glaciers over this period. The year 2000 inventory was created by manual on-screen digitizing using Landsat ETM+ satellite imagery (15 m panchromatic band) in the background and the year 2016 outlines as a starting point. Major challenges faced were late and early seasonal snow, clouds and shadow, the geo-location mismatch between Landsat and Sentinel-2 as well as the correct interpretation of ice patches and ice under debris cover. In total, we re-mapped 2967 glaciers covering an area of 885.5 km2 in 2000, which is 91.7 km2 (or 10.4%) more than the 793.8 km2 mapped in 2016. Area change rates (mean rate −0.65% a−1) increase towards smaller glaciers. Strongest area loss from 2000 to 2016 occurred at elevations ~1900 m but the highest relative loss was found below 800 m a.s.l. In total, 109 glaciers split into two or more entities and 264 had wasted away by 2016.