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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-2836</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>High-resolution glacier mapping reveals inventory biases and terrain controls on debris-covered glaciers in the Karakoram</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yang</surname>
<given-names>Xin</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0003-0598-4467</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Liu</surname>
<given-names>Shiyin</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9625-7497</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Xie</surname>
<given-names>Fuming</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wei</surname>
<given-names>Jinyue</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhou</surname>
<given-names>Jun</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Duan</surname>
<given-names>Yunpeng</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Shen</surname>
<given-names>Yiyuan</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhu</surname>
<given-names>Yu</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0895-8147</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Liu</surname>
<given-names>Qiao</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7285-5425</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff6">
<sup>6</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Afzal</surname>
<given-names>Muhammad Mannan</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Saifullah</surname>
<given-names>Muhammad</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff7">
<sup>7</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Yunnan Provincial Key Laboratory of International Rivers and Transboundary Eco-security, Kunming 650500, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Institute of International Rivers and Eco-security, Yunnan University, Kunming, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Yunnan International Joint Laboratory of China-Laos-Bangladesh-Myanmar Natural Resources Remote Sensing Monitoring, Kunming 650500, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>School of Earth Science, Yunnan University, Kunming, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>College of Geography and Environmental Science, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff6">
<label>6</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff7">
<label>7</label>
<addr-line>Department of Agricultural Engineering, Muhammad Nawaz Shareef University of Agriculture, Multan, Pakistan</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>16</day>
<month>06</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>31</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Xin Yang et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2836/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2836/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2836/egusphere-2026-2836.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2836/egusphere-2026-2836.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Accurate glacier inventories are fundamental for quantifying glacier change, estimating ice volume and assessing meltwater resources. However, medium-resolution inventories often fail to resolve critical glacier characteristics in topographically complex and debris-rich mountain environments. Here, we present the 2 m Karakoram Glacier Inventory (2mKGI), developed from high-resolution ZY-3 optical imagery, a co-registered ZY-3 digital elevation model (DEM) and auxiliary optical datasets through an integrated deep-learning and manual-refinement framework. The inventory identifies ~13,900 glaciers covering 21,261.8 &amp;plusmn; 278 km&amp;sup2;, including 2,239.9 &amp;plusmn; 82.8 km&amp;sup2; of supraglacial debris, with an overall mapping uncertainty of &amp;plusmn;4.7 %. Comparison with existing inventories reveals that previous medium-resolution products commonly underestimate glacier numbers while simultaneously overgeneralizing debris-covered glacier margins. These biases substantially influence glacier-count statistics, estimates of debris-covered area, and the interpretations of glacier-change signals. The newly identified glaciers are mostly &amp;lt;0.1 km&amp;sup2;. Despite their limited area, their thin ice and shorter response times may make them particularly sensitive to warming. Topographic analysis further demonstrates that supraglacial debris is preferentially distributed across low-elevation and low-slope glacier tongues, highlighting the strong controls of valley geometry, ice transport processes, and ablation-zone morphology on debris persistence. The 4 m ZY-3 DEM highlights that high-resolution topographic information improves the delineation of glacier-units, accumulation&amp;ndash;ablation zone structure and debris-covered tongues by preserving steep headwalls, slope discontinuities, tributary junctions, local relief and low-gradient terrain. The 2mKGI will provide a high-resolution geometric and topographic benchmark for glacier-change assessment, ice-thickness inversion, glacier-evolution modelling and next-generation automated glacier mapping in the Karakoram.</p>
</abstract>
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