2018 Glacier Inventory of Alaska was formally released by the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources (NIEER) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Lanzhou on Dec. 22. It updates the glacial distribution data of Alaska. 

As the most sensitive and long series indicator and proxy of climate change, glacier change information has been regarded as the most important data resource in global change study.  

Recently, a research group from the State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences of NIEER updated information on the distribution of Alaska glaciers and released the glacier Inventory of Alaska Dataset by using remote sensing and geographic information system technology.  

This glacier inventory was compiled based on 2018 Landsat OLI remote sensing image and RGI 6.0 Glacier catalog data of Alaska, and used the most accurate and time-consuming method to interpret glacial data. 

2018 Glacier Inventory of Alaska was a totally new investigation on the updated glacial distribution of Alaska. It showed a total of 27043 glaciers with a total area of 81285 km2. 

The Release of 2018 Glacier Inventory of Alaska Dataset has important scientific values to the Arctic glacier research and global glacier changes, the influences of water cycle and water resources, and comparative and cooperative study on the changes of the three-pole cryosphere.