Global mapping of lake-terminating glaciers
Authors/Creators
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Steiner, Jakob1, 2, 3
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Armstrong, William4
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Kochtitzky, William5
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McNabb, Robert6
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Aguayo, Rodrigo7
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Bolch, Tobias8, 9
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Maussion, Fabien10
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Agarwal, Vibhor11
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Barr, Iestyn12
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Baurley, Nathaniel13
- Cloutier, Mike
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DeWater, Katelyn5
- Donachie, Frank14
- Drocourt, Yoann
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Garg, Siddhi15
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Joshi, Gunjan16
- Guzman, Byron
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Kutuzov, Stanislav17
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Loriaux, Thomas
- Mathias, Caleb18
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Menounos, Brian18
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Miles, Evan19, 20, 21
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Osika, Aleksandra22
- Potter, Kaleigh5
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Racoviteanu, Adina23
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Rick, Brianna24
- Sterner, Miles
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Tallentire, Guy25
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Tielidze, Levan26, 27
- White, Rebecca28
- Wu, Kunpeng8, 29
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Zheng, Whyjay30
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1.
Utrecht University
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2.
University of Graz
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3.
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development
- 4. Appalachian State University
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5.
University of New England
- 6. Ulster University
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7.
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
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8.
Graz University of Technology
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9.
University of St Andrews
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10.
University of Bristol
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11.
Emporia State University
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12.
Manchester Metropolitan University
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13.
University of Southampton
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14.
University of Sheffield
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15.
University of Dayton
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16.
Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf
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17.
The Ohio State University
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18.
University of Northern British Columbia
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19.
University of Zurich
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20.
University of Fribourg
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21.
Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research
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22.
University of Silesia in Katowice
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23.
Université Grenoble Alpes
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24.
RedCastle Resources (United States)
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25.
Loughborough University
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26.
Monash University
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27.
Ilia State University
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28.
University of Leeds
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29.
Yunnan University
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30.
National Central University
Description
This dataset is the result of a community effort to identify lake-terminating glaciers in the Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) version 7 (RGI 7.0 Consortium, 2023), and is fully described in the related paper, published in Earth System Science Data (Steiner et al., 2026).
For a full description of the dataset, including the definition of lake-terminating categories, see either the related paper, or the README in the GitHub repository.
Dataset
The dataset/ folder has the following structure:
dataset/
├─ contributor_files/
└─ RGI-v7.0-G-{region}/
├─ RGI-v7.0-G-{region}_{contributor}.csv
├─ csv/
└─ RGI-v7.0-G-{region}_lakeflag.csv
├─ lakeflags/
└─ RGI-v7.0-G-{region}_lakeflag.gpkg
└─ outlines/
└─ RGI-v7.0-G-{region}_laketerminating.gpkg
Where:
- contributor_files/ contains all of the original/individual submissions provided by different contributors
- csv/ contains a comma-separated variable (.csv) file for each RGI region
- lakeflags/ contains a geopackage (.gpkg) file for each RGI region, with the geometry set to the RGI7 centroid latitude/longitude
- outlines/ contains a .gpkg file for each RGI region, with the geometry set to the RGI7 outline, but only for glaciers categorized as lake-terminating category 1-3
Each of the files in the dataset folders contains the following fields:
- rgi_id - the RGI v7.0 ID for the glacier
- lake_cat - the lake-terminating category for the glacier, as defined below;
- image_id - the ID of the image that was used to classify each glacier;
- image_date - the date (or date range) of the image used to classify each glacier;
- inventory_doi - the DOI of the lake inventory (if used);
- contributor - the ID of the contributor(s) who classified the glacier
- notes - any additional notes from each contributor
Additionally, the contributor_files/ may have an additional field, auto_term. When running scripts/finalize_csv.py, the column term_type (if included in the .csv) is renamed to auto_term to indicate that scripts/assign_lake_flag.py was run and there was an inventory lake within the buffer around the terminus (auto_term == 2)
The .gpkg files contained in the lakeflags/ and outlines/ directories are generated from the .csv files and the RGI outlines using scripts/generate_geopackage.py
References
RGI 7.0 Consortium, 2023. Randolph Glacier Inventory - A Dataset of Global Glacier Outlines, Version 7.0. Boulder, Colorado USA. NSIDC: National Snow and Ice Data Center. doi:10.5067/f6jmovy5navz.
Steiner, J. et al (2026). Global mapping of lake-terminating glaciers, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, doi: 10.5194/essd-2025-315.
Files
GLIMS-RGI/lake_terminating-v1.0.zip
Files
(93.0 MB)
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|---|---|---|
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Additional details
Related works
- Is described by
- Journal article: 10.5194/essd-2025-315 (DOI)
Software
- Repository URL
- https://github.com/GLIMS-RGI/lake_terminating