TITLE:
Glaciers Reduction and Climate Change Impact over the Last One Century in the Mulkhura River Basin, Caucasus Mountains, Georgia
AUTHORS:
Levan G. Tielidze, Roman Kumladze, Lasha Asanidze
KEYWORDS:
Glaciers Dynamic, Remote Sensing, Glaciers of Georgia, Caucasus Mountains, Tviberi and Tsaneri Glaciers
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Geosciences,
Vol.6 No.5,
April
30,
2015
ABSTRACT: The reduction of glaciers
of Mulkhura River basin over the last century is revised in the paper. Mulkhura River basin is located on the
southern slope of the central Caucasus from the Mount Bashili (4148 m) to the
Mount Gistola (4860 m) and it is the main center of the contemporary
glaciations in the Enguri River basin. The
percentage reduction of areas of compound valley glaciers with the relation of
air temperature and atmospheric precipitation is given in this paper. Also the paper considered the dynamics of
the Tviberi and Tsaneriglaciers,
which were the Georgia’s largest
glaciers at the end of the 19th
century. We used the catalog of the glaciers of the southern slope of the
Caucasus compiled in 1911 by a well-known researcher of the Caucasus K.
Podozerskiy, which was drawn up on the basis of the 19th century maps. In order
to identify the area and number of the glaciers of the 60s of the 20th century,
we used the work of R. Gobejishvili—the Georgian glaciologist of the 20th-21st
centuries, composed on the basis of 1:50,000 scale topographic maps of 1960.
The data of 2014 have been obtained by the Landsat aerial images of L8 OLI/TIRS
(Operational Land Imager and Thermal Infrared Sensor) taken in August 2014. In
the mentioned study, except of the old topographic maps and aerial images, we
used the climate information especially air temperature and precipitation data
of the Mestia weather station.