[GLIMS] GLIMS Update: Your feedback is requested

[Jeffrey]

Dear GLIMS contributors:
GLIMS is up for a major review this spring, both at NASA (for support of the American part of GLIMS) and worldwide (by WGMS, NSIDC, the Global Terrestrial Network-Glaciers, and generally what we are calling the GLIMS Advisory Board).  I solicit your feedback about any of the following topics.  Your feedback can be in the form of published references, anecdotes, your GLIMS glacier database activity (contributions to it, or use of it), and other comments.  This feedback may be compiled in notes that will be sent to NASA  and the GLIMS Advisory Board, but also can be made available to the GLIMS consortium.   Please consider each question; you may have feedback on just a few of them, and that's fine.  Your feedback is extremely important. I do not mind prompt, brief feedback and then hopefully later some more deliberative or quantitative feedback.
1. What was your role, if any, in the IPCC 4th or 5th assessments, and what if anything is the link to GLIMS?  This would include, for instance, submission of data to the GLIMS database and then repackaging data for the Randolph Glacier Inventory. 
2. How are GLIMS data being used in publications and science  (published references and anecdotes are welcome)? 
3. What satellite datasets are you using in GLIMS-related data analysis?
4. How important was the free availability (at no cost and with liberal access) of ASTER data, and later Landsat data, to your team's glacier analysis for either the GLIMS inventory or the Randolph Glacier Inventory or your non-inventory scientific studies of glaciers?
5. Via GLIMS (in some capacity) have you contributed widely used algorithms for glacier/snow or glacierized terrain analysis, and has the algorithm been published or otherwise made available?   Is it in a handy, downloadable, publicly usable form?  If you have an important, versatile analysis algorithm related to glacier studies, but it is not publicly available, could it be made available in the future?  What would be needed to make that happen?
6. Have you or your team, in some association with GLIMS, had any role in instrument calibration/validation for orbiting or airborne remote sensing instruments or assessments derived from those instruments, e.g.,  GRACE, ICESAT, LiDAR, etc. ? 
7. What roadblocks or hurdles are you experiencing in GLIMS data analysis or use of the GLIMS database or uploading data to the database? What recommendations do you have regarding the database?
8. What recommendations do you have for future satellite sensors, or data payment policies, or satellite data ground processing?  
9. How (or how not) is GLIMS meeting contemporary needs, say for global glacier mass balance or applied science or basic scientific glaciological research?
Sincerely,
Jeff K
Jeffrey S. KargelDepartment of Hydrology & Water ResourcesUniversity of ArizonaTucson, AZ 85742  USAEmail(1) jeffreyskargel at hotmail.comEmail(2) kargel at hwr.arizona.eduMobile phone: 520-780-7759www.glims.org 		 	   		  
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