Runoff from the Himalayan glaciers serves as a vital freshwater resource for one of the most populated regions globally. Majority of these glaciers are heavily debris-covered and the debris-covered parts display associated supraglacial ponds (SGPs) whose hydrological buffering roles remain unconstrained1. Glaciers in this region are losing ice mass at an alarming rate due to a warming climate. This ice loss is visible in form of rapidly extending and evolving SGPs and proglacial lakes in the region. SGPs are characteristic surface features on relatively slow-moving, debris-covered glaciers and they grow by the coalescence of smaller ponds. SGPs are known for significant meltwater storage, progressively buffering the runoff regimes, and a more complete understanding of this buffering process is crucial to improving projections of the region's future water resources in a changing climate. These SGPs also play an important role in increasing the ablation of debris-covered glaciers through a positive feedback mechanism. SGPs are highly recurrent and persistent with high interannual variability2 and small ponds have the potential to expand rapidly3 increasing the risks of glacial lake hazards.
Nearly all of the SGP research has been carried out on a few selected Nepalese glaciers. The Indian Himalaya is an interesting target region for furthering such research because of its geographic extent which allows investigation across all three predominant glacier-climate regimes in this region, i.e., monsoon-dominated, westerly-dominated, and precipitation-transition zone. Interestingly, a regional-scale analyses of SGPs in the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) is missing and through this project, we plan to target this research gap. We aim to perform these analyses for selected glacierised basins within all the three climate regimes of the IHR, for which sufficient glacio-hydrological, climatic, and remote sensing datasets are available.
The project objectives are:
1. Identifying glacierised basins with sufficient data (glacio-hydrological, climatic, and remote sensing) coverage as the target study regions.
2. Developing semi-automated approaches to map SGPs on a variety of remotely-sensed datasets, extendable to any glacierised region globally.
3. Multitemporal mapping of SGPs in the study regions.
4. Characterising SGPs based on several physical determinants such as their dimensions, rate of change, albedo, etc. and studying the variations across the IHR.
5. Linking the spatiotemporal evolution of SGPs with the climate evolution in the IHR.
Throughout this 3.5-year project, the candidate will undertake a training programme which will develop a suite of transferrable-skills, including field courses, quantitative and advanced skills training, an internship, and a Chartered Management Institute certificate in strategic management and leadership. This project will develop skills in satellite image mapping, geospatial and time series data analyses and will be best suited to students with a background in the geosciences or a related discipline. The skills developed and published outputs will enhance the candidate’s post-PhD opportunities across a wide spectrum of potential careers.
Candidate Background: The successful candidate should have experience in GIS. Programming skills in Matlab, Python, and R are not essential, but desirable.
More project details are available here: https://www.quadrat.ac.uk/quadrat-projects/
How to apply: https://www.quadrat.ac.uk/how-to-apply/
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