EVALUATION OF GLACIERS IN PAKISTAN AND in-COUNTRY CAPACITY BUILDING FOR USAID: PROBLEMS AND POSSIBILITIES

Fears of diminution of vital melt water from glaciers in the western Himalaya led Pakistani authorities to request investigatory assistance from the USA four years ago, which led to a joint research proposal for a grant to be funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and managed by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), with matching funding from the Government of Pakistan (GOP). The proposed match from GOP was not forthcoming, which caused numerous problems but we were nonetheless able to assess glaciers across the Karakoram and Nanga Parbat Himalaya, as well as in the Hindu Raj and the Pakistani Hindu Kush using ASTER and other imagery. Of >300 glaciers examined by us, ~65% are either advancing or showing no change in terminus position, which is in distinct contrast to the glacier downwasting and backwasting characteristics of much of the eastern Himalaya, and the neighboring Hindu Kush of Afghanistan. This is potentially good news for Pakistan irrigators downstream unless climatically associated monsoon floods also return again as they did in summer 2010. We also identified and mapped 53 new surging glaciers in the western Himalaya not previously reported. GRACE gravity-field data reveal a unique positive ice mass anomaly that is spatially coincident with advancing and surging glaciers apparently caused by increasing precipitation and a hypothesized unusual confluence dynamic between the westerly storm tracks and the southwest Asian monsoon.