Rock Glacier Inventories (RoGIs) in 12 areas worldwide using a multi-operator consensus-based procedure
Rouyet L. Bolch T. Brardinoni F. Caduff R. Cusicanqui D. Darrow M. Delaloye R. Echelard T. Lambiel C. Pellet C. Ruiz L. Schmid L. Sirbu F. Strozzi T.
27 August 2025Copernicus Publications
Earth System Science Data
2025#17Issue 84125 - 4157 pp.
The Rock Glacier Inventories and Kinematics (RGIK) community has defined standards for generating Rock Glacier Inventories (RoGIs). In the framework of the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative for Permafrost (ESA CCI Permafrost), we set up a multi-operator mapping exercise in 12 areas around the world. Each RoGI team was composed of 5 to 10 operators, involving 41 persons in total. Each operator performed similar steps following the RGIK guidelines (RGIK, 2023a) and using a similar QGIS tool. The individual results were compared and combined after common meetings to agree on the final consensus-based solutions. In total, 337 certainrock glaciers have been identified and characterised, and 222 additional landforms have been identified as uncertainrock glaciers. The dataset consists of three GeoPackage (gpkg) files for each area: (1) the primary markers (PMs) locating and characterising the identified rock glacier units (RGUs), (2) the moving areas (MAs) delineating areas with surface movement associated with the rock glacier creep based on spaceborne Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), and (3) the geomorphological outlines (GOs) delineating the restricted and extended rock glacier unit (RGU) boundaries. Here we present the procedure for generating consensus-based RoGIs, describe the data properties, highlight their value and limitations, and discuss potential applications. The final PM/MA/GO dataset is available on Zenodo (Rouyet et al., 2025; 10.5281/zenodo.14501398). The GeoPackage (gpkg) templates for performing similar RoGIs in other areas and exercises based on the QGIS tool are available on the RGIK website (https://www.rgik.org, last access: 15 August 2025).
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Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg (UNIFR), Fribourg, 1700, Switzerland
Norce Norwegian Research Centre As, Tromsø, 9294, Norway
Institute of Geodesy, Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), Graz, 8010, Austria
Central-Asian Regional Glaciological Centre of Category 2 under the Auspices of Unesco, Almaty, 050010, Kazakhstan
Department of Biological, Geological, and Environmental Sciences, University of Bologna (UniBo), Bologna, 40126, Italy
Gamma Remote Sensing Ag, Gümligen, 3076, Switzerland
Institut des Sciences de la Terre (ISTerre), Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA), Saint-Martin-dHères, 38400, France
Department of Civil, Geological, and Environmental Engineering, University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), Fairbanks, 99775-5900, AK, United States
Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, University of Lausanne (UNIL), Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland
Argentine Institute of Nivology, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences (IANIGLA), Mendoza, 5500, Argentina
Institute of Advanced Environmental Research, West University of Timişoara (WUT), Timişoara, 300223, Romania
Department of Geosciences
Norce Norwegian Research Centre As
Institute of Geodesy
Central-Asian Regional Glaciological Centre of Category 2 under the Auspices of Unesco
Department of Biological
Gamma Remote Sensing Ag
Institut des Sciences de la Terre (ISTerre)
Department of Civil
Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics
Argentine Institute of Nivology
Institute of Advanced Environmental Research
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