In the Himalaya, large areas are covered by glaciers and seasonal snow. They are an important source of water for the Himalayan rivers. In this article, observed changes in glacial extent and mass balance have been discussed.

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The Himalayan mountain front is characterised by front parallel longitudinal valleys called Dun, that occupy the synformal troughs. The perennial glacial fed rivers Ganga and Yamuna experience first major gradient loss along the valley floor of Dehra Duyn and produce characteristic landforms and deposits by the gradational processes of streams that are often controlled by climate fluctuation.

TanDEM-X SAR mission was launched in June, 2010 with an aim to generate high resolution global DEMs of HRTI-3 specification. Considering this, it is very important to evaluate the accuracy of the DEM generated using TanDEM-X InSAR data over the rugged terrains of Indian Himalayas. This paper presents the results of an evaluation study of the DEMs generated through interferometric technique using TanDEM-X data over two Indian Himalayan glaciers viz. Hamtah and Gangotri.