2025/05/07 by Christopher D. Stringer, Jonathan L. Carrivick, Duncan J. Quincey +2 · 1 voice
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Cryospheric studies and observations #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Polar Research and Ecology
paper · doi:10.1080/15230430.2025.2483474
openalex publication_date 2025/05/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
-means clustering to classify Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) images covering six proglacial sites of sub-Antarctic islands, the Antarctic Peninsula, and the McMurdo Dry Valleys at 30-m resolution. We quantify spatial patterns of water, bedrock, vegetation, and sediments to an accuracy of 77 percent. Vegetation is most abundant on South Georgia (7 percent of the proglacial area) and the South Shetland Islands (1 to 2 percent). Furthermore, we use change vector analysis (CVA) to discriminate landcover change in the twenty-first century. A latitudinal pattern is evident in ice loss and proglacial landscape change; for example, loss of ice on South Georgia and proglacial landcover change is two orders of magnitude greater than in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Four of the studied sites had similar landscape stability (64 to 68 percent unchanged), with Alexander Island an exception (50 percent change) due to recent enhanced glacier melt. Overall, we show how landcover of proglacial regions of the climaticallysensitive sub-Antarctic and Antarctica has changed since 2000, with a CVA accuracy of 80 percent. These findings inform understanding of geomorphological activity and sediment and nutrient fluxes and hence terrestrial and marine ecosystems.