Rock glacier inventory for Estero Derecho nature reserve, semiarid Andes of Chile (30°S)

DOI

The dataset is a rock glacier inventory of the Estero Derecho nature reserve, a headwater sub-catchment of the Elqui River basin, in the semiarid Chilean Andes (30°S). The inventory has been compiled followed the guidelines proposed by the Rock Glacier Kinematics and Inventory (RGIK) Standing Committee of the International Permafrost Assocciation on mapping rock glaciers. It contains the boundaries of the landforms, their geometric information, and kinematic data. Remote sensing data adpoted to produce this dataset includes optical images (ESRI basemap imagery: Vivir with 0.6 m resolution from 23 March 2023, and Google Earth Pro images) and Interferometric Syntethic Apertura Radar (InSAR) images (Sentinel-1). The kinematic data has been quantified from Sentine-1 data during September 2018 and Febraury 2024. An extended glacial (moraines) and periglacial landform inventory is presented, to complete the geomorphological mapping of the basin and to provide geomorphological context for the distribution and evolution of rock glaciers.

The Primary Markers file contains the identification of landforms indicating if they correspond to rock glacier or not: Landforms were identified as being "rock glaciers" if they presented the following morphologies: a talus front and a continuity to lateral margins, and optionally ridge-and-furrow surface topography (RGIK, 2023). "Uncertain rock glaciers" were identified when there was an obvious front but no obvious lateral margins or a chaotic topography without clear creeping morphology. "Not a rock glacier" landforms were also marked to indicate: i) landforms that look similar to rock glaciers but are not (e.g., rock outcrops, talus scree, gelifluction lobes) ; ii) landforms recognised as rock glaciers in previous inventories that do not meet the RGIK (2023) criteria; and iii) areas delineated as rock glaciers in the Chilean public national glacier inventory (DGA, 2022) which correspond to the rooting zone or an exaggerated lateral extension, both of which are excluded from the rock glacier delineation following RGIK (2023). An attribute table is filled for each RG or URG, which includes the identification, location, geomorphological connections, completeness and activity classification.Initially, rock glaciers were divided into five activity (velocity) classes: active; active uncertain; transitional; relict uncertain or relict, based on their geomorphological activity indicators (i.e., steepness of the front, freshly exposed material, and surface expressions of flow). Specifically, according to the RGIK (2023) guidelnes: i) active uncertain which indicates that the landform is not in a relict state but there was insufficient evidence to distinguish between active and transitional; and ii) relict uncertain which, similarly, indicates it is not active but it is not possible to differentiate between transitional and relict states. In a second step, InSAR-derived multiannual unwrapped interferograms were used to define semi-quantitative velocity classes and the kinematic attribute for each landform.Comparing the initial geomorphological categorisation, the InSAR analysis confirmed the activity class of 62 (63%) rock glacier units, while at the same time it suggests the need to reclassify 37 (37%) landforms. Specifically, 33 (77%) of those initially interpreted as intact do not exhibit detectable movement (

Identifier
DOI https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.987674
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.987674
Provenance
Creator Navarro, Gonzalo ORCID logo; Yáñez San Francisco, Eduardo; Robson, Benjamin A; Schaffer, Nicole ORCID logo; Castro-Cancino, Benjamín; Fernández, Alfonso ORCID logo; Valois, Rémi; MacDonell, Shelley ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2026
Funding Reference National Agency for Research and Development https://doi.org/10.13039/501100002848 Crossref Funder ID R20F0008 Climate Action Planning; National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development https://ror.org/016nafs32 ROR 3180417 Quantifying the volume and changes in geomorphology of rock glaciers in the Coquimbo Region
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; Data access is restricted (moratorium, sensitive data, license constraints); https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess false
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format application/zip
Size 1.2 MBytes
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-70.000 LON, -30.000 LAT); Chile