ESA - Eduspace EN - Global Change

Coastal change

Danube Delta change detection Oil spills

Deforestation

Bardia National Park Congo River Basin Kameng-Sonitpur Elephant Reserve Kilimanjaro Rondonia Shillong and Guwahati

Ice

Antarctica 2003 Climate change and glaciers Glacier analysis using radar imagery Glacial retreat in the Alps Glacier Ice Flow Monitoring of glaciers in the Himalayas Remote sensing of ice and snow

Urbanisation

Cairo City of Kathmandu Córdoba Himalayas Kathmandu Valley Lagos

Vegetation

Annapurna Conservation Area Lost in the Andes Ngorongoro Conservation Area Niger Inland Delta Vegetation in South America

Exercise 4: GIS

In this exercise you will digitise a glacier tongue by hand on the 1988 image and overlay the result on the 2010 image to see glacier change.

Select the 1988 image and zoom in to a glacier tongue that has changed a lot according to the animation in Exercise 2 or to the image subtraction you did in Exercise 3.

Choose GIS Tools. Create a new theme layer. Call the theme 1988_border and make it of type Polyline. Click Create layer and save it in your working directory. Now click on the Polyline icon down in the GIS Manager window.

Start digitising the glacier tongue by clicking along the border. Double click to finish the Polyline. Click Stop editing. Save the theme.

Now select the 2010 image. Open the theme that you just created in the 1988 image. Click on “1988_border” in the Available Datasets window.

The 1988 glacier outline superimposed on the 2010 image

1. Can you see the glacier change? Describe it.

Send this page to a friend

Climate change and glaciers

Introduction Background

Exercises

Worksheet introduction Exercise 1: Inspection of true colour RGB composites Exercise 2: Animation Exercise 3: Band Arithmetic Exercise 5: Measurement of area Exercise 6: Multitemporal analysis Conclusions

Eduspace - Software

LEOWorks 4 (MacOS)LEOWorks 4 (Linux)LEOWorks 4 (Windows)

Eduspace - Download

Andes_images.zip GoogleEarth file