From May 16 to 18, 2017, the 4th CAS-NASA Workshop on Earth Observation for Glacier Change in High Mountain Asia (HiMAT), sponsored by CAS and NASA, was held in Juneau, Alaska, the US. The three-day workshop, co-organized by RADI, CAS, and the Earth Sciences Division of NASA, brought together more than 50 experts from the HiMAT Teams of China and the US.

Michael Freilich, Director of the NASA Earth Sciences Division, said that based on the excellent work of the previous meetings, NASA secured a budget of $3.5million over 3 years, issued a solicitation, and selected 13 projects. Mr. Freilich presented that, as the meeting is an important platform for the two sides to carry out substantive exchanges, he looked forward to deepening the regional frontier scientific research to obtain a series of landmark results.

GUO Huadong, Chair of the Steering Committee of CAS’ s HiMAT, spoke highly of the progress that CAS and NASA have made since 2014. He said that, through previous three China-US workshops, scientists of both sides have reached a consensus on the significance of research, scientific issues, and research directions, and expected that the two sides could further deepen the exchange to make breakthroughs in the research on the Earth observations for glacier change in High Mountain Asia

Afterward, scientists from both parties, from the aspects of Earth observation methods, model simulation, and regional change analysis, exchanged views on glacier snow change monitoring and drive research, related ecological assessment, and disaster monitoring based on CAS and NASA respective projects. This has demonstrated the progress both sides have achieved and the research foundation and capacity for environmental change and downstream effect analysis and deepened the understanding of regional effects of glacier change.

After the report of the workshop, scientists were divided into groups to hold discussions. Experts exchanged views on data acquisition, study area, spatial scale, research phase and temporal-spatial resolution by their respect studies. Regarding system drive, system change and change impact of model studies, all groups of experts, from the perspective of data needs, held discussions on data products and types to provide detailed information to the further cooperation of subject between the two research teams.

They also discussed the preliminary design plan of the Glacier Melt Toolbox (GMELT), data-sharing portal development of CAS and NASA, and aggregation and application of existing data products. Both sides agreed that GMELT is a significant achievement of the project. They will build their respective GMELT system and further improve data standards, data reference forms, sharing policies and principles through communication and coordination. Moreover, the two sides also exchanged views on the development of GMELT cloud platform. After the workshop, the participants conducted a field investigation on the Alaska Mendenhall Glacier. 

The workshop decided that the 5th CAS-NASA Workshop on Earth Observation for Glacier Change in High Mountain Asia will be held in China in 2018.

Michael Freilich delivers a speech at the workshop.

Prof. GUO Huadong at the workshop.

A scene of the workshop.

Group photo.

A field trip on the  Alaska Mendenhall Glacier.