Automating Glacier Mapping of Ladakh using Satellite Imagery

This Omdena Local Chapter Challenge runs for 6 weeks and is a unique experience to try and grow your skills in a collaborative and safe environment with a diverse mix of people from all over the world. 

You will work on solving a local problem, initiated by Ladakh, India Chapter.

The problem

There are several temporal inventories of Ladakh’s glaciers (e.g. ‘Multitemporal glacier inventory revealing four decades of glacier changes in the Ladakh region’ by Soheb et al. 2022) and other regional/global inventories (e.g. Randolph Glacier Inventory, NSIDC World Glacier Inventory, etc.) that cover the region. However, efficient time series (annual) mapping of glaciers with the least uncertainty and a focus on debris-covered glaciers is much needed at this time. The results will add to developing strategies to mitigate the adverse impact of the climate crisis.

This initiative’s goal is to build tools for the temporal mapping of glaciers with high precision using satellite imagery. Ultimately, it is expected that a GIS dashboard will be created to produce a glacier map of Ladakh. The larger aim of the project is to help connect local communities, regional administration, and academia with AI tools and help develop ways to efficiently manage water resources as we face challenges posed by the current and urgent climate crisis. The project will have an exclusive focus on identifying and addressing the problems faced by Ladakh’s communities.

The goals

The goals of this challenge are:

• Create a knowledge base of the water-related problems faced by the local communities of Ladakh.
• Build an open-source GIS dashboard for the glaciers of Ladakh.
• Set up a data retrieval API for satellite images.

Why join? The uniqueness of Omdena Local Chapter Challenges

Omdena Local Chapter Challenges are not a competition or hackathon but a real-world project that will grow your experience to a new level.

A unique learning experience with the potential to make an impact through the outcome of the project. You will go through an entire data science project lifecycle. This covers problem scoping, data collection, and preparation, as well as modeling for deployment.

And the best part is that you will join the global and collaborative community of Omdena with tons of benefits to accelerate your career.

Read more on how Omdena´s Local Chapters work