干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

The water discharge from the heavily glacierized Sary-Jaz River Basin (Eastern Kyrgyzstan) is of high importance for the very arid Tarim Basin located in Xinjiang (north-western China). We investigated glacier changes in the entire Sary-Jaz River Basin, which covers a large part of the Central Tien Shan, for the period from 1990 to 2010 based on Landsat TM’/ETM+’data. We found 1310 glaciers (>0.1km(2)), which covered 2055 +/- 41.1 km(2) (approximate to 18% of the entire basin) in 1990. The glaciers shrank by 77.1 +/- 57.1 km(2) (3.7 +/- 2.7%) until 2010. This is considerably lower than in most other ranges of the Tien Shan. The lowest insignificant area loss (-1.5 +/- 2.7%) was found in the eastern part of the basin where the largest glaciers and highest peaks are situated. Debris-covered glaciers shrank significantly less than clean-ice glaciers of comparable size. We also identified a few advancing glaciers which show surge characteristics. Climate data from the Tien Shan weather station (3614m asl.) close to the study region showed no significant long-term trend.