Objectives On 5th September 2022, an Ms 6.8 earthquake struck Luding County, Ganzi Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China, with the epicenter about 10 km away from Hailuogou Glacier. The affect of this earthquake on Hailuogou Glacier has been widely concerned by the society.
Methods Firstly, the glacier area is monitored based on normalized difference snow index using multi-temporal Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 optical satellite images. Secondly, Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar satellite image is used to monitor the displacement before and during the Luding earthquake based on pixel offset tracking technology.
Results The results indicate that the area of Hailuogou Glacier shows a shaking trend from 2016 to 2022, which have a negative correlation with the daily average maximum temperature. While the velocity has a positively correlation with the slope gradient and the daily average maximum temperature. The Luding earthquake did not cause a significant increase in the velocity of Hailuogou Glaciers in a large range, but it significantly disturbed the front area of the ice waterfall.
Conclusions The possibility of direct disaster caused by ice avalanches after the earthquake was low, but which increased the risk of disaster caused by debris flow.
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