Erik Karl Eldar Schytt Holmlund


Last Name

Schytt Holmlund

First Name

Erik Karl Eldar

ORCID

0000-0002-9146-557X

Organisational unit

Filters

2021 - 20222
Reset filters

Search Results

Publications 1 - 2 of 2
  • Halving of Swiss glacier volume since 1931 observed from terrestrial image photogrammetry
    Item type: Working Paper
    Schytt Holmlund, Erik Karl Eldar; Dehecq, Amaury; Hugonnet, Romain; et al. (2022)
    The Cryosphere Discussions
    The monitoring of glaciers in Switzerland has a long tradition, yet glacier changes during the 20th century are only known through sparse observations. Here, we estimate a halving of Swiss glacier volumes between 1931 and 2016 by mapping historical glacier elevation changes at high resolution. Our analysis relies on a terrestrial image archive known as TerrA, which covers about 86 % of the Swiss glacierised area with 21,703 images acquired during the period 1916–1947 (1931 on average). We developed a semi-automated workflow to generate digital elevation models (DEMs) from these images, resulting in a 45 % total glacier coverage. Using the geodetic method, we estimate a Swiss-wide glacier mass balance of –0.52 ± 0.09 m w.e. a−1 between 1931 and 2016. This equates to a 51.5 ± 6.1 % loss in glacier volume. We find that low elevation, high debris cover, and gently sloping glacier termini are conductive to particularly high mass losses. In addition to these glacier-specific, quasi- centennial elevation changes, we present a new inventory of glacier outlines with known timestamps and complete attributes from around 1931. The fragmented spatial coverage and temporal heterogeneity of the TerrA archive are the largest sources of uncertainty in our glacier-specific estimates, reaching up to 0.50 m w.e. a−1. We suggest that the high-resolution mapping of historic surface elevations could unlock great potentials also for research fields other than glaciology.
  • Aldegondabreen glacier change since 1910 from structure-from-motion photogrammetry of archived terrestrial and aerial photographs: Utility of a historic archive to obtain century-scale Svalbard glacier mass losses
    Item type: Journal Article
    Schytt Holmlund, Erik Karl Eldar (2021)
    Journal of Glaciology
    Photogrammetric reconstructions of the Aldegondabreen glacier on Svalbard from 17 archival terrestrial oblique photographs taken in 1910 and 1911 reveal a past volume of 1373.7 ± 78.2 · 106 m3; almost five times greater than its volume in 2016. Comparisons to elevation data obtained from aerial and satellite imagery indicate a relatively unchanging volume loss rate of − 10.1 ± 1.6 · 106 m3 a−1 over the entire study period, while the rate of elevation change is increasing. At this rate of volume loss, the glacier may be almost non-existent within 30 years. If the changes of Aldegondabreen are regionally representative, it suggests that there was considerable ice loss over the entire 1900s for the low elevation glaciers of western Svalbard. The 1910/11 reconstruction was made from a few of the tens of thousands of archival terrestrial photographs from the early 1900s that cover most of Svalbard. Further analysis of this material would give insight into the recent history and future prospects of the archipelago's glaciers. Photogrammetric reconstructions of this kind of material require extensive manual processing to produce good results; for more extensive use of these archival imagery, a better processing workflow would be required.
Publications 1 - 2 of 2