glacierhack2017

Code and notes for the 2017 UW eScience geohackweek GlacierHack project.

See the wiki for results

Objectives

• To learn new skills to work with large raster datasets, specifically high-resolution DEMs
• Learn how to calcluate elevation change, volume change, and geodetic mass balance from DEM time series
• Learn how to generate glacier surface flow velocity maps from feature tracking of images and DEMs
• Explore options to integrate DEM time series and implement various processing steps into Google Earth Engine

Sub-projects (see wiki for more info)

Geodetic mass balance

Lead(s): @spectorp, @mattols

Feature-tracking and velocity map time series

Lead(s): @willkochtitzky @prajjwalpanday

Debris thickness and insolation modeling

Lead(s): @drounce, @tarynblack, @mattols

Lagrangian elevation change for mountain glaciers

Lead(s): @dshean

Candidate sites

Let's identify one or more sites with a good, dense time series of DEM/image data. See count maps and indices.

High-mountain Asia

Index of available DEMs: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5c3UTO8DDZwNkktcGtBSXJvQjQ

Pacific NW (Mt. Rainier, Mt. Baker, Mt Olympus, etc.)

Index of available DEMs: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5c3UTO8DDZwNDFvWkQ0bFdsa0U

Background material

• Raster processing ghw2017 tutorial: https://geohackweek.github.io/raster/
• Rainier DEM example: https://geohackweek.github.io/raster/06-pygeotools_rainier/
• GDAL API reference: (http://www.gdal.org/gdal_tutorial.html)

Packages

• GDAL
• NumPy
• Matplotlib
• pygeotools
• vmap
• demcoreg
• Ames Stereo Pipeline

Notes on ASP Install

1. Download the latest ASP binaries for your operating system (Linux or OS X). For bleeding edge, see the daily builds.
2. Extract: tar -xzvf StereoPipeline--x86_64-.tar.gz (filling in the appropriate filename)
3. Move the extracted folder to a location on your system where you store executables (e.g., bindir="~/sw" or bindir="/usr/local/bin"): mv StereoPipeline--x86_64-/ $bindir
4. Add the ASP bin subdirectory to your path. In bash: export PATH=${PATH}:$bindir/StereoPipeline--x86_64-/bin. To make this permanent, add that line to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile.