Inventory of glaciers and perennial snowfields of  the conterminous USA

Fountain, Andrew G.; Glenn, Bryce; Mcneil, Christopher

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-4077-2023

Articles | Volume 15, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-4077-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-4077-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 9

Data description paper

|

15 Sep 2023

Data description paper |

| 15 Sep 2023

Inventory of glaciers and perennial snowfields of the conterminous USA

Andrew G. Fountain, Bryce Glenn, and Christopher Mcneil

Data sets

Data From: Inventory of Glaciers and Perennial Snowfields of the Coterminous USA Andrew G. Fountain and Bryce Glenn https://doi.org/10.15760/geology-data.03

Short summary

Glaciers are rapidly shrinking globally. To identify past change and provide a baseline for future change, we inventoried the extent of glaciers and perennial snowfields across the western USA excluding Alaska. Using mostly aerial imagery, we digitized the outlines of all glaciers and perennial snowfields equal to or larger than 0.01 km² using a geographical information system. We identified 1331 (366.52 km²) glaciers and 1176 (31.00 km²) snowfields.