Study of the patterns of variations in ice lakes and the factors influencing these changes on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau

The ice lakes in the southeastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have exhibited a pronounced expansion against the backdrop of global warming, consequently amplifying the local risk of ice lake outburst disasters. However, surveys of ice lake changes in the entire region have consistently been incomplete due to the prevalent high cloud density. On the basis of Landsat remote sensing images and the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud computing platform, in this study, the full convolution segmentation algorithm is utilized to accurately and comprehensively map the regional distribution of ice lakes in southeastern Tibet at consistent time intervals in 1993, 2008, and 2023. Furthermore, the formation, distribution, and dynamic changes in these ice lakes are investigated. The numbers of ice lakes discovered in 1993, 2008, and 2023 were 2520, 3198, and 3877, respectively. These lakes covered areas of approximately 337.64 ± 36.86 km