DYNAMICS AND EVOLUTION OF ICONIC GLACIERS IN SOUTHERN ALPS OF NEW ZEALAND

Fox Glacier, in the southern alps of New Zealand, is the object of this thesis. It is located in the Westland Tai Poutini National Park., in the Western Coast of New Zealand. This glacier is the third largest glacier out of 3100 glaciers situated in the Southern Alps of New Zealand (Chinn 2001). The surface velocity was investigated on the lower part of Fox Glacier and compared with previous literature. In this thesis, 15 pairs of satellite imagery are used to find the surface velocity of the ablation zone of the fox glacier using satellite images (Sentinel 2 and Landsat 8). Their spatial resolution is 10m (Sentinel images, visible band) and 15 m (Landsat images, panchromatic band). Glacier surface velocity fields from 2011 to 2021 are calculated with the Orientation Correlation technique, implemented in the ImGRAFT templatematch tool. This made possible to confirm the glacier retreating and to investigate the spatial and temporal variability of the velocities. The spatial resolution is of the order of few centimeters. The velocity fields calculated on them have demonstrated the strength of the method with respect to spatial resolution and intensity of the image changes.