Pléiades Glacier Observatory
The Pléiades Glacier Observatory (PGO) is an initiative by the French Space Agency (CNES) and LEGOS to facilitate access to Pléiades satellite stereo-imagery and digital elevation models (DEMs) for glaciologists. Pléiades sub-meter imagery are acquired on 10-20 glacierized targets every season to generate 2 and 20 m digital elevation models (DEMs) and 0.5 m ortho-images. Data are freely available (under specific conditions) to all science users.
Repeat acquisitions are performed every five years to build a catalog of high resolution elevation difference maps. The first PGO campaign took place in 2016 in the North Hemisphere and early 2017 in the South Hemisphere. The PGO entered into revisit mode in summer 2021 in the North and summer 2022 in the South.
We just submitted to The Cryosphere (EGU) a manuscript describing this program and the data provided to the community. A pre-print is available for public discussion in EGUsphere:
Berthier, E., Lebreton, J., Fontannaz, D., Hosford, S., Belart, J. M. C., Brun, F., Andreassen, L. M., Menounos, B., and Blondel, C.: The Pléiades Glacier Observatory: high resolution digital elevation models and ortho-imagery to monitor glacier change, EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-250, 2024
The publication page lists articles already published using PGO data.
- Map of elevation changes: quick-looks
- Mandal et al.: Glacier mass balance and its climatic and nonclimatic drivers in the Ladakh region during 2000–2021 from remote sensing data
- A pre-print describing the PGO program is online for public discussion & review
- Kneib et al.: Controls on ice cliff distribution and characteristics on debris-covered glaciers
- Andreassen et al.: Validation of Sentinel-2 based glacier mapping in Norway using Pléiades satellite orthoimages