Document Type
Dataset
Publication Date
7-2026
Abstract
Historic and recent elevation data for the glaciers in the conterminous US were differenced to estimate glacier mass and volume change.
Historic glacier elevations were obtained from the USGS National Elevation Dataset (https://doi.org/10.15760/geology-data.04), a digitized product from the USGS 1:24,000 paper topographic maps that included the glacier extent (Gesch, 2007). Recent glacier elevations were derived from aerial lidar and from satellite radar. The lidar data were largely obtained from the USGS 3D Elevation Program (Stoker and Miller, 2022; US Geological Survey, 2024), and filtered by acquisition date using only those data collected between mid-summer and early autumn. The final set of data was collected over the period 2007 – 2020 with 96% of the area surveyed during the 7-year period 2014 - 2020. Satellite radar data was obtained from the Copernicus world-wide set of 30 m digital elevation models (DEMs) derived from the TanDEM-X Synthetic Aperture Radar mission, made available as the GLO-30 product (Rizzoli et a., 2017; TanDEM-X), and referred to in this report as ‘Copernicus DEM’. For the conterminous US glaciers, the data in the Copernicus DEM was acquired between 2011 - 2014. All DEMs were coregistered to the Copernicus DEM because it was the highest quality DEM covering all glaciers of the conterminous US. Coregistration refers to the universal coregistration method (Nuth and Kääb. 2011) applied within the open-source python library demcoreg (Shean et al., 2016) , to remove systematic errors due to poor DEM alignment. First all DEMs were reprojected to the respective UTM zone of a given subregion. Subregions were defined by the administrative boundary of the local land management agency, such as US Forest Service national forests or National Park Service national parks (Table 1). Coregistration was then applied within non-glaciated, sparsely vegetated or bare ground defined by the Randolph Glacier Inventory (Pfeffer, W.T., et al. 2014) , National Land Cover Dataset (Dewitz, 2016) , and Global Copernicus Landcover Dataset (Buchhorn, 2018) , where slope angles were < 40°. Once the DEMs were coregistered they were differenced creating the data files included here.
DOI
10.15760/geology-data.11
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/45011
Recommended Citation
Fountain, Andrew G.; Glenn, Bryce Allen; McNeil, Christopher; and Menounos, Brian, "Glacier Elevation Difference Data for the Conterminous U.S." (2026). Geology Faculty Datasets. 11. https://doi.org/10.15760/geology-data.11
Description
These data support the analysis in the report, Fountain et al., (in review) Extensive Glacier Loss in the Conterminous United States, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The data files are organized according to the local land management agency, (Table 1).