Monitoring glacier elevation and volume changes with digital photogrammetry and GIS at Gepatschferner glacier, Austria

Digital elevation models of Gepatschferner in Northern Tyrol, Austria were obtained with digital photogrammetry from high altitude stereo photo pairs and by digitizing an analogue topographic glacier map, for 1990 and 1971, respectively. A difference map was calculated to identify regions of glacier elevation increases and decreases corresponding to glacier mass gain and loss. While the glacier tongue below 2600 m showed mainly increases in glacier surface elevation as compared to 1971, the remaining glacier thickness experienced both increases and decreases. The accumulation zone above 3200 m contained several extreme cases of morphological features with altitude changes>+30 m. While the i…