Integration of the new Chinese Glacier Inventory into GLIMS and its ramifications

Bruce RAUP (1), LIU Shiyin (2), LIU Qiao (2), GUO Wanqin (2), XU Junli (2)

Abstract
In December of 2014 a new inventory of glaciers in China was released. This inventory is composed of glacier outlines derived from satellite imagery (primarily Landsat), and other scalar data. These data are being ingested into the GLIMS (Global Land Ice Measurements from Space) Glacier Database. In the near term, these data will replace the older inventory (one based on maps from the mid- to late-20th century) in GLIMS due to geolocation errors in the old outlines. Eventually a corrected old inventory will be reincorporated into GLIMS. This work is part of a recent push to complete the global coverage of GLIMS by ingesting data from the Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI), while at the same time improving GLIMS in regions with existing coverage by ingesting improved or more recent outlines. The heterogeneous nature of the GLIMS Glacier Database presents challenges for Web-based data visualization, as well as the creation of subsets that conform to RGI formatting and versioning. We present our approaches to solving these issues.