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This trend of glacier retreat also results, in several cases, in increased debris-covered glacierized surfaces, such as recently reported by Herreid and Pellicciotti ( Reference Herreid and Pellicciotti2020), who estimate that 7.3% of mountain glaciers are debris covered. A similar trend was documented by Holobâcă ( Reference Holobâcă2013, Reference Holobâcă2016) for the Elbrus glacier system. This trend has also been observed in the European Alps, where Zemp and others ( Reference Zhang, Jia, Menenti and Hu2019) have reported rapid glacier retreat between 20 (~1.8% a −1), as well as in the Greater Caucasus, where Tielidze and others ( Reference Tielidze2020a) have observed a significant increase in glacier area loss (~0.72% a −1) for the same period. Accelerated shrinkage of glacier ice has recently been reported in the high mountains of Asia (Cogley, Reference Cogley2017 Pritchard, Reference Pritchard2019), and under the expected 1.5☌ global warming, 36 ± 7% of the present glacier mass is projected to disappear by the end of the century (Kraaijenbrink and others, Reference Kraaijenbrink, Bierkens, Lutz and Immerzeel2017). Regional- and global-scale climate changes affect mountain glaciers, which are known to be extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and precipitation (Haeberli, Reference Haeberli, Bamber and Payne2004 Barry, Reference Barry2006). This new automatic method offers the possibility of quickly correcting glacier mapping errors caused by the presence of debris and makes automatic mapping of glacierized surfaces considerably faster than the use of other subjective methods. The DebCovG-carto toolbox leverages multiple orbits to automate the mapping of debris-covered glacier surfaces. Validating the remotely-sensed boundaries of Ushba and Chalaati glaciers using field GPS data demonstrates that the use of pairs of Sentinel-1 images (2019) from identical ascending and descending orbits can substantially improve debris-covered glacier surface detection.
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The algorithm uses synthetic aperture radar-derived coherence images and the normalized difference snow index applied to optical satellite data. Here, we present the DebCovG-carto toolbox to delineate debris-covered and debris-free glacier surfaces from non-glacierized regions. As a result of this rapid retreat, significant parts of the glacierized surface area can be covered with debris deposits, often making them indistinguishable from the surrounding land surface by optical remote-sensing systems. Global warming is causing glaciers in the Caucasus Mountains and around the world to lose mass at an accelerated pace.