Increasing contribution of ice sheets to global sea-level changes represents one of the most widely recognized potential consequences of climate warming. Greenland contains enough ice to raise sea level by several meters and the current mass balance of its coastal regions is still largely uncertain. The proposed project will use ASTER stereographic data collected by the Terra satellite to generate two digital elevation model mosaics (2000-01 and 2008-09) of coastal Greenland and two maps (2000-01 and 2008-09) of ice margin position in the same region. Data processing will be accomplished using ENVI software package with the DEM extraction module. These new data sets will be used to: (1) estimate ice mass loss/gain and ice margin retreat/advance in coastal Greenland, (2) examine geographic patterns of loss/gain and retreat/advance in different parts of Greenland, (3) evaluate whether assessments of coastal Greenland mass balance based on airborne/spaceborne laser altimetry data may be biased due to small spatial footprint of such data, and (4) provide baseline data for similar future studies and for quantitative modeling of Greenland ice sheet.
