Vegetated debris-covered glaciers and stagnating patterns in the Manaslu region of Nepal Himalaya

Glacier complexes in the Manaslu region of Nepal Himalaya have been experiencing only moderate mean area losses and geodetic mass balance since the 1970s (~ -0.26 % a^-1, -0.17 ± 0.03 m w.e.a⁻¹. Many debris-covered glacier tongues exhibit large amounts of supra-glacial vegetation and stagnating patterns. Here, we investigate these apparent patterns of stagnation of glacier systems in this area, specifically the prevalent vegetation development and the geomorphological characteristics of debris cover tongues. We use remote sensing-derived surface velocities derived from image cross-correlation (RGDyn open-source package) based on Landsat and Sentinel-2 time series combined with high-resolution declassified Corona imagery and Pléiades. Preliminary results indicate ~8 % supra-glacial vegetation coverage at a regional scale and general glacier slowdown with variable movement rates depending on glacier morphology and debris covered characteristics.