China conducts first glacier inventory survey using airborne ice radar

Photo taken on April 10, 2020 shows the scenery of a glacier in Subei Mongolian Autonomous County, northwest China's Gansu Province. (Photo by Du Zheyu/Xinhua)

BEIJING, Dec. 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have conducted a glacier inventory survey in northwest China, using their independently developed airborne ice radar technology, the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has announced.

The survey covered typical glaciers including the Laohugou No. 12 Glacier, the Qiyi Glacier, and the Ningchan River No. 3 Glacier in northwest China's Gansu Province. This marks the first application of the technology in glacier inventory surveys in China, the research institute said on the official CAS website on Monday.

The survey results are expected to provide key support for water resource management in the Hexi Corridor, which stretches over a distance of nearly 1,000 km in Gansu, as well as ecological environment protection and sustainable development in the Qilian Mountains.

The airborne ice radar is a radar system mounted on an aircraft for conducting penetrating observations of glaciers. It emits low-frequency electromagnetic waves towards the glaciers and receives the scattered echoes from the glacier surface and the bedrock underneath. By processing and inverting the received echoes, researchers can obtain information on the thickness and volume of the glaciers.

The radar system was mounted on aircraft including China's self-developed Xinzhou-60 airplane, providing an airborne remote-sensing capability.

"Unlike traditional techniques that mainly acquire surface information of glaciers, airborne ice radar has the ability to penetrate the glacier surface and obtain information about the interior and the bottom of the glaciers," said Zhu Jinbiao, deputy director of the aerospace remote sensing center at the research institute.

The survey involved a total of 13 flights from September to November. Based on the collected data, the scientists created digital elevation models of the glacier surface and the bedrock underneath, glacier profiles, and three-dimensional perspective views of the glaciers.