Assessment
Pakistan is home to more than 7000 glaciers, making it one of the world’s largest glaciated regions outside the polar areas. The meltwater from these glaciers feeds the rivers of the Indus Basin, providing life-sustaining water for agriculture, drinking, hydropower, and industry. In short, glaciers are Pakistan’s natural water towers.
However, these glaciers are now melting faster than ever due to rising temperatures and climate change. Because millions of people rely on this meltwater, systematic monitoring of glacier health is essential for sustainable water management, disaster preparedness, and long-term climate resilience.
SUPARCO specializes in tracking critical glacier and snow cover dynamics. This includes monitoring glacier area changes, snow cover, melt rates, glacier movements, mass balance, and the evolution of potentially dangerous glacial lakes that can trigger Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs).
Key Capabilities & Monitoring Parameters
— Glacier Extent Mapping (Optical & Radar Imagery)
Identifying how much glacier area is shrinking or expanding over time.
— Glacier Mass Balance Assessment
Measuring ice gained in winter and lost in summer to understand long-term glacier trends.
— Surface Flow Velocity Monitoring
Using satellite feature-tracking to detect how fast glacier ice is moving.
— Supraglacial Lake Mapping & GLOF Risk Assessment
Tracking meltwater lakes forming on glaciers and evaluating their potential to burst.
— Snow Cover & Melt Rate Estimation
Analyzing seasonal snow patterns to understand water availability and runoff.
— Debris Cover Analysis on Glacier Surfaces
Monitoring rocks and sediment that influence melt rates and glacier behavior.
Recent Studies
Image Gallery
Glaciers Animations 2025
Glaciers Geospatial Portal
The Glacier Portal offers an integrated platform of analytical infographics and GIS-based maps that present key spatial statistics of glaciers across Pakistan, from national and river-basin scales down to individual glaciers. It delivers detailed insights into glacier extent, area, length, and elevation attributes, as well as the spatio-temporal evolution of glacier mass and dynamics in response to changing climatic conditions.
Through multi-temporal satellite observations, the portal supports systematic monitoring of glacier retreat and advance, identification of surge-type glacier behaviour, and assessment of the formation and expansion of supra-glacial and proglacial lakes. In addition, it highlights potential Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) hotspots and provides glacier-wise and basin-wise change trends, seasonal snow cover variability, and long-term indicators of glacier health derived from Earth observation data.