Modern glaciation of Tsambagarav mountain (Mongolian Altai)

In this paper, the author researches the glaciated Tsambagarav Mountain, one of the greatest centers of modernglaciation of the Mongolian Altai. In this study of the glaciated mountain range Tsambagarav, the author takes into consideration certaininterpretations of the multichannel satellite photographs Landsat-7 (August, 2002; 2008). The author studies the topographical maps at ascale of 1:100000 of the years of 1945 and 1975. The photographs processing and the thematic interpretation of the glaciers have been performedusing computer programs MICRODEM/Terra Base-II; and the decoding of the glaciers has been carried out using a digital terrainmodel according to the SRTM. The analysis data of the remote sensing mountain glaciers monitoring of the site of Tsambagarav are presentedas an electronic data bank of glaciers comprising a cartographic database, thematic databases in the format DBASE, attribute tablesdigital layers, directories and classifiers. The thematic interpretation of these images by SPACE computer programs GOOGLE EARTH,MICRODEM/Terra Base-II is able to provide an acceptable accuracy of estimates of the size and morphology of glaciers. As a result ofremote sensing monitoring we have defined the area, volume, length, thickness, height of the glaciers and their morphological types - as anexposition of glaciers. In the mountainous range of Tsambagarav there are only 40 glaciers with the total area of 73.18 km2, the total volumeof 3.03 km3, at an average thickness of glaciers of 51.3 m. (2008). The glaciers on the mountain ridge exposures are distributed so that theirlargest number is observed at the north-eastern and northern slopes (40%). The largest number of glaciers is found on the slopes of thenorthern and north-eastern exposure. The smallest number of glaciers is registered among the glaciers in the southeast, south and southwestexposures. From the morphological point of view the glaciers are of four types (valleys, cirques, hanging and flat). Of these, the most commontype is the hanging and the cirque-valleys glaciers (70% of the total number of the glaciers), the flat tops of the glaciers occupy 36.13%of the total glaciation of the mountainous site. The vertical distribution of the glacier area has its own characteristics in the three mountainranges. In the first massif, Tsast-ula, the zone of the maximum glaciation area locates within the range of 3500-3750 m (32.86% of the totalarea of the glaciers), the second massif of Yamat-ula is in the altitude range of 3500-3750 m (74.71% of the total glacier area ); and the thirdmassif, Hoh-nuru-ul, is in the altitude range of 3750-4000 m (41.52% of the total glacier area of the mountain site).

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