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  Italian Glaciers Inventory

A new Glacier Inventory is an indispensable scientific and practical requirement in Italy due to the importance of evaluating the present glacier coverage and the recent changes driven by climate.

In fact, during the last decades the glacier shrinkage has been occurring at higher rates than in the recent past thus impacting on mountain landscape and asking for more detailed studies to evaluate glacier behavior and model glacier evolution. Furthermore Alpine glaciers represent a not negligible water and tourist resource, then to manage and promote them is needed to know their distribution, size, features and changes. These studies are particularly needed in Italy, (where is located more than a fifth of the entire Alpine glaciation) to update the glacier knowledge and to contribute to the World Glacier Inventory with new data and information.

The first Italian Glacier Inventory dates back to 1959-1962. It was compiled by the Italian Glaciological Committee (CGI) in cooperation with the National Research Council (CNR); this first inventory was mainly based on field data coupled with photographs (acquired on the field) and high resolution maps. The Italian glaciation resulted to be spread into 754 ice bodies which altogether were covering 525 km2. More recently (in the Eighties) a new inventory was compiled to insert Italian data into the World Glacier Inventory (WGI); aerial photos taken at the end of the Seventies and at the beginning of the Eighties (and in some cases affected by a high and not negligible snow coverage) were used as the main source of data. No other national inventory were compiled after that period. Nevertheless during the last decade the largest part of the Italian Alpine Regions have produced regional and local glacier inventories which in several cases are also available and queried through web sites and web GIS application.

The actual need is now to obtain a complete, homogeneous and the more possible contemporary picture of the Italian glaciation which encompasses and enhances the already available regional and local data and all the new updated information coming from new sources of data (e.g.: orthophotos, satellite images, etc..).

This challenge was accepted by the University of Milan and the EvK2CNR who are supported by Sanpellegrino Spa and are working to compile the new updated Italian Glacier Inventory in close cooperation with the Italian Glaciological Committee.

The World Glacier Monitoring Service supports and promotes this important project whose results will contribute to enlarge our knowledge on European glaciation and will constitute input data for glacier forecasting and modeling.

 
Citation proposal
. Italian Glaciers Inventory. https://geoportal.mountaingenius.org/geonetwork/srv/api/records/33cf82ff-01e4-4b25-8837-a5af421420ff
 

Simple

Date ( Publication )
Edition
Presentation form
Digital map
Purpose

The first step of this project focuses on detecting and mapping glacier outlines on high resolution orthophotos (taken in the period 2007-2011). These data will permit to develop a glacier database describing glacier area and main features (following the well-known guidelines of the World Glacier Monitoring Service summarized by Paul et al., 2010). The identification of the Italian glacier bodies and the evaluation of glacier area and main features are performed by analyzing aerial orthophotos acquired in the time frame 2006-2012 (pixel size 0.5 m x 0.5 m).

Moreover the data base will be improved and updated also analyzing regional data and by processing and analyzing high resolution satellite imagines acquired on the last 2 years.

Status
Completed

  Originator

Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra A. Desio, Università di Milano - Guglielmina Adele Diolaiuti (Assistant Professor of Physical Geography )  
via Mangiagalli 34 Milano 20133 Italy

  +39-02-50315510  
  +39-02-50315494 
Maintenance and update frequency
As needed
Keywords ( Theme )
  • SHARE
Keywords ( Theme )
  • glaciers
Keywords ( Place )
  • alps
Keywords ( Place )
  • italy
Access constraints
Copyright
Use constraints
Intellectual property rights
Other constraints
Spatial representation type
Vector
Metadata language
eng
Character set
UTF8
Topic category
  • Boundaries
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S
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W


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Reference system identifier
WGS 1984
Protocol
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link
Name
Description
Protocol
OGC:WMS-1.1.1-http-get-map
Name
Description
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Statement

gmd:MD_Metadata

File identifier
33cf82ff-01e4-4b25-8837-a5af421420ff   XML
Metadata language
Character set
UTF8
Date stamp
2025-02-21T18:37:42
Metadata standard name
ISO 19115:2003/19139
Metadata standard version
1.0

  Point of contact

- EvK2- CNR ( )  
Via San Bernardino, 145 Bergamo 24126 Italy

  +39/035/3230511  
  +39/035/3230551 
 
 

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