David Loibl

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | HU Berlin · Department of Geography

We use numerical modelling of glacier mass balance combined with recent and past glacier extents to obtain information on Little Ice Age (LIA) climate in southeastern Tibet. We choose two glaciers that have been analysed in a previous study of equilibrium-line altitudes (ELA) and LIA glacier advances with remote-sensing approaches. We apply a physi...

With the advent of the two Sentinel-1 (S1) satellites, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data with high temporal and spatial resolution are freely available. This provides a promising framework to facilitate detailed investigations of surface instabilities and movements on large scales with high temporal resolution, but also poses substantial processi...

Bedrock overdeepenings exposed by continued glacial retreat can store precipitation and melt-water, potentially leading to the formation of new proglacial lakes. These lakes may pose threats of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) in high mountain areas, particularly if new lakes form in geomorphological setups prone to triggering events such as la...

To tackle the twenty-first-century challenges for sustainability, a deeper understanding of their complexity is needed. Hence, interdisciplinary human-environment research integrating knowledge, perspectives, and solutions across scales is crucial. Yet, questions of 'scale' and 'scaling' continue to challenge human-environment research. Despite sub...

This study presents a new dataset of remote sensing-derived Transient Snowline Altitude (TSLA) measurements for glaciers in High Mountain Asia. We use the Google Earth Engine to obtain TSLA data for approx. 28 · 104 glaciers larger than 0.5 km². After filtering and postprocessing, the dataset comprises ca. 9.66 million TSLA measurements with an ave...

Most of the world’s 1500 active volcanoes are not instrumentally monitored, resulting in deadly eruptions which can occur without observation of precursory activity. The new Sentinel missions are now providing freely available imagery with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions, with payloads allowing for a comprehensive monitoring of volca...

Geomorphological mapping is a well-established method for examining earth surface processes and landscape evolution in a range of environmental contexts. In glacial research, it provides crucial data for a wide range of process-oriented studies and palaeoglaciological reconstructions; in the latter case providing an essential geomorphological frame...

With the advent of the two Sentinel 1 satellites, high-quality Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data with high temporal and spatial resolution became freely available. This provides a promising framework to facilitate broad applications of detailed SAR- and interferometry- based surface change and motion timeseries. However, computing environments fo...

Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data provides cryospheric researchers with information of high temporal and spatial resolution, which, however, poses substantial processing challenges by the sheer amount of scenes and their file size. Designed to focus on cryospheric SAR and interferometric applications, the novel software tool OSARIS ('O...

Glaciers are dynamic features which react sensible to climate change. They shape the landscape in a characteristic way due to their erosive power, and the transportation and deposition of eroded material. GIS offers, in combination with remote sensing data and digital elevation models (DEMs), a powerful tool to identify glaciers and glacial landfor...

Glacier-related hazards pose severe threats to communities in high mountain environments and adjacent regions. Started in December 2016, the joint interdisciplinary project ‘MORSANAT’ aims to create a MOdel- and Remote Sensing-based toolkit to Analyze such glacier-related NATural hazards. Study site is the Tien Shan in central Asia, an approximatel...

Recent large-scale remote sensing studies have shown that glacier mass loss in south-eastern Tibet, specifically in the eastern Nyainqêntanglha Range exceeds the average in High Asia. However, detailed studies at individual glaciers are scarce and the drivers behind the observed changes are poorly constrained to date. Employing feature tracking tec...

The Burhan Budai Shan in NE Tibet represents a key location for examining the variable influence of the mid-latitude westerly and monsoonal circulations on late Quaternary glaciations in this sector of the Tibetan Plateau. Our study investigates the glacial history of mountains near Lake Donggi Cona (35°17′N, 98°33′E) using field mapping in combina...

The eastern Nyainqêntanglha Range is located at the southeastern fringe of the Tibetan Plateau, representing one of the major pathways of monsoonal moisture from the foreland to the plateau. Owing to the combination of a rugged high mountain topography and abundant moisture, more than 8000 km² of the eastern Nyainqêntanglha Range are covered by mon...

Advances and retreats of glaciers on the Tibetan plateau (TP) are widely regarded as indicators for climate changes sensitive to macroclimatic forcing mechanisms like the Asian summer monsoon. However, it often remains unclear why some glaciers retreat or advance earlier than others, particularly regarding the timing of the so-called ‘Little Ice Ag...

A set of maps that illustrate the key results of a study on glaciers and late Holocene glacier change in the eastern Nyainqêntanglha Range, southeastern Tibet, is presented. The cartographic challenge was to present this information in a way that focuses on the most important findings but retains as much detail as possible. The layout is based on t...

The remote eastern Nyainqêntanglha Range contains numerous temperate monsoonal glaciers which are highly sensitive to climate change. However, there is still a great lack of information on late Holocene glacier fluctuations and the factors driving these changes. We conducted field work at two large debris covered glaciers on the northern and southe...

The remote eastern Nyainqêntanglha Range in southeastern Tibet is situated in a transition zone between warm-wet subtropical and cold-dry plateau climate conditions. In this high mountain environment, intense summer monsoon rainfalls support numerous temperate glaciers despite the latitude of ∼29 • to ∼31 • N. Due to the outstanding im-portance of...

Temperate glaciers in the eastern Nyainqêntanglha range, southeastern Tibet, are highly sensitive to climate change and are therefore of particular high interest for research on late Holocene changes of the monsoonal climate in High Asia. However, due to the remoteness of the area, the scarcity of empirical data, and the challenges to re-mote sensi...

A high-resolution geomorphological map covering the central part of a low mountain range close to the city of Aachen in the border region of western Germany and eastern Belgium is presented. It is conceptually based on the ‘Geomorphologische Karte 1:25,000’ (GMK) which was developed by German researchers in the 1970s and 1980s but differs from the...

Two major obstacles are hampering the production of high resolution geomorphological maps: the complexity of the subject that should be depicted and the enormous efforts necessary to obtain data by field work. The first factor prevented the establishment of a generally accepted map legend; the second hampered efforts to collect comprehensive sets o...

Map presented in the article "Geomorphological map of the Wüstebach (Nationalpark Eifel, Germany)—an example of human impact on mid-European mountain areas" (JoM, 2010)

Please click here to download the map associated with this article.Two detailed maps illustrating the geomorphology and hydrology combined with land-use covering 2.5 km of the small upper catchment of the Wüstebach in the Nationalpark Eifel, Germany, are presented. The maps, at a scale of 1:5,000, are based on the “Deutsche Grundkarte 1:5,000” offi...