Abstract
High mountains in arid regions are known to act as water towers which generate runoff and redistribute it over time and space. Snow and glaciers play important roles as water storages but currently undergo changes in a warming climate. A recession of glacier area was observed in the Pamir during the last four decades of the twentieth century, while recent results indicate slight mass gains during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Fedchenko Glacier, the largest valley glacier in the Pamir, shows a continuous but small volume reduction over the past eight decades. After a period of peak flow will be passed in the near future, a further glacier wastage will reduce annual discharge and change seasonal water availability towards higher streamflow in spring and a runoff reduction in summer. These changes will cause water shortages during the main growing season and cause negative effects for agriculture which highly depends on irrigation.
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Acknowledgements
Wilfried Hagg was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG, Project HA 5061/3-1). The work of Christoph Mayer was supported by funds of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für vergleichende Hochgebirgsforschung and the TanDEM-X data proposal XTI_GLAC0335.
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Hagg, W., Mayer, C. (2016). Water of the Pamir – Potential and Constraints. In: Kreutzmann, H., Watanabe, T. (eds) Mapping Transition in the Pamirs. Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23198-3_5
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