Inventory of glaciers and perennial snowfields of the coterminous USA

Abstract. This report summarizes the methods used to construct an inventory of glaciers and perennial snowfields of the contiguous United States. The inventory is based on interpretation of mostly aerial imagery provided by the National Agricultural Imagery Program, US Department of Agriculture with some satellite imagery in places where aerial imagery was not suitable. The inventory includes all perennial snow and ice features greater than 0.01 km². Due to aerial survey schedules and seasonal snow cover, multiple imagery dates were required. The earliest date is 2013 and the latest is 2020, but more than 73 % of the outlines were acquired from 2015 imagery. The inventory is compiled as shapefiles within a geographic information system that includes feature area and location. The inventory identified 1331 (366.52 km²) glaciers, 1776 (31.00 km²) perennial snowfields, and 35 (3.57 km²) buried-ice features. The data including both the shape files and tabulated results are publicly available at https://doi.org/10.15760/geology-data.03 (Fountain and Glenn, 2022).