| Résumé: |
The evolution of glaciers and glacier lakes can be observed and quantified worldwide by using freely available satellite imagery. Despite this, in some parts of the world the development of glacial lakes is not well researched and therefore their development over time and space is unknown. We test a semiautomated method using remote sensing to make a glacial lake inventory in three study zones in north-east Afghanistan from 1993 to 2020 to evaluate if this method can accurately map glacial lakes. Our results show that the semi-automated method can detect and accurately map the correct areas of glacial lakes, however it fails to map some of the glacial lakes depending on acquisition date, size, and type of lake. Our inventory shows an overall increasing trend of glacial lakes in all three catchments with a pronounced increase in the areas which are densely glaciated in the higher altitude ranges. In 2020 the number of glacial lakes were 232 in Panjshir, 15 in Western Central Upper Panj and 192 in Upper Panj which are 439 glacial lakes in all the study zones combined. The findings presented here are consistent with the global trend of an increasing area and number of glacial lakes. It also highlights the sensitivity of this semiautomated method and the need for more research within this field to be able to automatically monitor glacial lakes. |