Photogrammetric Monitoring of Rock Glacier Motion Using High-Resolution Cross-Platform Datasets: Formation Age Estimation and Modern Thinning Rates

Abstract

The availability of remote sensing imagery at high spatiotemporal resolutions presents the opportunity to monitor the surface motion of rock glaciers, a key constraint for characterizing the dynamics of their evolution. In this paper, we investigate four North American rock glaciers by automatically measuring their horizontal surface displacement using photogrammetric data acquired with crewed and uncrewed aircraft along with orbital spacecraft over monitoring periods of up to eight years. We estimate vertical surface changes on these rock glaciers with photogrammetrically generated digital elevation models (DEM) and digitized topographic maps. Uncertainty analysis shows that the imagery with the highest resolution and most precise positioning have the best performance when used with the automated change detection algorithm. This investigation produces gridded velocity fields over the entire surface area of each study site, from which we estimate the age of rock glacier formation using along-flow velocity integration. Though the age estimates vary, the ice within the modern extent of these landforms began flowing between 3000 and 7000 years before present, postdating the last glacial maximum. Surface elevation change maps indicate present-day thinning at the lower latitude/higher elevation sites in Wyoming, while the higher latitude/lower elevation sites in Alaska exhibit relatively stable surface elevations.