Abstract ID: 3.7478 | Pending | Talk/Oral | TBA | TBA

Patagonian glaciers located in Los Glaciares National Park, in Argentine, have currently a total surface area of around 600000 ha and are responsible for feeding the Santa Cruz river basin with melting water. This meltwater then converges into one river and flows more than 250 km, crossing arid Patagonia to finally end at the Atlantic Ocean. Some glaciers have suffered great surface retreat in the last 40 years, and this can be easily measured through satellite images. Other glaciers are considered stable because their fronts and sides show no visible changes over decades. This work demonstrates that the visual stability of a glacier’s front and surface, observed both in satellite images and in situ, is not sufficient to evaluate its condition. Instead, it becomes necessary to resort to other study tools, such as volumetric analysis. Mass balances were calculated using the geodetic method with free Digital Elevation Models from missions such as SRTM, ALOS, TanDEM, and ASTER, from different dates. Corrections were made using lidar data from the ICESat-2 mission. An analysis methodology was developed, and the necessary corrections were generated to ensure correct comparisons in the same vertical and horizontal reference systems. Additionally, meteorological and ENSO data from space missions were used to determine a relationship between climate variables and mass balance. Preliminary results show a positive relationship between meteorological data and mass balance, with pooled analysis being essential for understanding the dynamics of these formations. This review denotes that there is a loss of mass throughout the National Park, which can be measured from space at a very low cost. The methodology was replicated in several glaciers within the National Park, yielding similar results. As a further goal, a repository on GitHub is being developed for storing and sharing source code and methodologies.