Glaciers in the Indus Basin

Abstract The Indus Basin covers an area of about 1.1 million square kilometers. A large part of the basin lies in the Hindu Kush, Karakorum, and Himalaya mountains. Glacier melt is essential in sustaining the water requirements, food security, and livelihoods of millions of people in that area. Information on glacier areas, including elevation range, aspect, slope, hypsometry, and debris cover, plays a significant role in the assessment and analysis of water availability in river basins. An inventory of glaciers of the Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) area was developed in 2011 using Landsat satellite images of 2005 ± 3 years. According to this inventory, about 3.8% of the Indus Basin within the HKH was found to be glaciated. The Indus Basin includes 18,495 glaciers with a total glacier area of 21,192 km 2 . 2409 m a.s.l. elevation of glacier is the lowest elevation of glaciers in the HKH region.