Glaciological applications with Landsat-7 imagery: early assessments

Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data from Landsat-7 are providing glac iologists with an ever-expanding data set that makes a comprehensive monito ring of the global cryosphere feasible for the first time in history. Examp les of ETM+ data illustrate its ability to satisfy major scientific needs i n the glaciological subdisciplines of sea-ice, glacier, ice-cap, and ice-sh eet research with high-resolution optical satellite imagery. Examples shown include use as proxy ground-truth, positioning glacier termini and snowlin es, and determining snow facies boundaries. The additional ETM+ panchromati c band, at a higher spatial resolution of 15 m, improves the spatial accura cy of these applications. The glaciological aspects of the Landsat-7 Long-T erm Acquisition Plan are discussed to show how the timing and location of t he image acquisitions will generate a cryospheric data set of unprecedented utility for future research. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Inc. A ll rights reserved.