Comparing the opportunities of Landsat-TM and Aster data for monitoring a debris covered glacier in the Italian Alps within the GLIMS project

The difficulties in monitoring partly debris covered glaciers by the application of remote sensing techniques is a well known problem. The use of visible (VIS) and near infrared (NIR) bands does not always provide sufficient information to detect the glaciers margins with remote sensing data. In this study the value of the thermal band for glacier detection is investigated. Particular attention is hereby drawn to the different opportunities of glacier monitoring using Landsat-TM and Terra-Aster data. Accordance and discrepancies of the respective data depending on the spatial resolution are shown and discussed. The presented case study was investigated at the debris covered Belvedere glacier, one of the test sites of the GLIMS project.