[GLIMS] New version of the World Glacier Inventory

[Michael Zemp]

Dear GLIMSlist-subscriber,

The World Glacier Monitoring Service and the U.S. National Snow and Ice
Data Center jointly revised and updated the World Glacier Inventory (WGI)
based on additional sources from the literature (e.g., Rau et al. 2004,
Cogley 2008, Radic&  Hock 2010). This latest version of the WGI contains
detailed glacier inventory information for more than 130,000 glaciers
covering over 470,000 sqkm and is online available from:
http://nsidc.org/data/glacier_inventory/index.html

When using this dataset, please reference as WGMS and NSIDC (1989, updated
2012):

WGMS and NSIDC (1989, updated 2012): World Glacier Inventory. Compiled and
made available by the World Glacier Monitoring Service, Zurich,
Switzerland, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder CO, U.S.A.
Digital Media.

Note that the WGI was initiated during the International Hydrological
Decade (IHD; 1965−1974) and is mainly based on aerial photographs
and maps of the second half of the 20th century. The database stores
geographical coordinates of glacier label points and tabular information
about glacier classification, area, length, orientation and altitude
range. New inventories including digital glacier outlines, mainly based on
satellite images, are stored in the GLIMS database including the full
complement of the WGI-defined glacier characteristics (cf.
http://www.glims.org). A detailed and commented overview on global glacier
datasets is available on the website of the Global Terrestrial Network for
Glaciers:http://www.gtn-g.org/data_overview.html

Please make use of these datasets and help us to further expand it with
your data contributions!

Best regards

Michael Zemp (WGMS)&  Florence Fetterer (NSIDC)

PS Sincere thanks go to the following staff members who were involved in
this latest revision of the WGI: Kathrin Naegeli, Ann Windnagel, Jon
Davis, Daniel Crumly, Bruce Raup, and Richard Armstrong.

+ + + +

Michael Zemp

Director WGMS, PD Dr. sc. nat.

World Glacier Monitoring Service
Department of Geography
University of Zurich
Winterthurerstrasse 190
8057 Zurich
SWITZERLAND

phone: +41 44 635 51 39
email:wgms at geo.uzh.ch  <https://webmail.geo.uzh.ch/src/compose.php?send_to=wgms%40geo.uzh.ch>
website:http://www.wgms.ch

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://nsidc.org/pipermail/glims/attachments/20120319/f0ecda37/attachment.html>