Abstract: It is of great value for systematically understanding the change of glaciers and water resources to monitor the glacier change on regional scale,especially the change of glacier mass balance.Based on the corrected SRTM and ASTER stereoscopic data,in this study the geodetic method was used to research the change of ice volume in the Qilian Mountains during the period from 2000 to 2010.The results are as follows:① The spatial matching error and spatial resolution relative error of the multi-source remote sensing DEM data were corrected,and the results revealed that the overall errors were small suitable for estimating and studying the glacier volume change and glacier mass balance on large spatial scale; ② The average decrease of glacier thickness in the Qilian Mountains during the period from 2000 to 2010 was(5.68±2.76) m,the average glacier mass balance was(-0.48±0.23) m w.e·a^-1,and the change of glacier volume was(-1.59±0.72) Gt; ③ The changes of average glacier mass balance and glacier volume in the Shule River Basin (5Y44) were the most obvious,where the average glacier mass balance was(-0.80±0.27) m w.e·a^-1,the average reduction of glacier thickness was(9.42±3.21) m,and the change of glacier volume was(-4.08±1.39) Gt.The change of glacier mass balance in the Heihe River Basin (5Y42) was the slightest,where the average glacier mass balance was(-0.05±0.21) m w.e·a^-1,and the glacier volume loss in the Datong River Basin (5J42) was the least with an ice volume change of(-0.12±0.08) Gt; ④ The change of glacier volume in the Qilian Mountains was in an increase trend from the west to the east,however the glacier mass balance was in a decrease trend from the west to the east.Temperature increase was still a major factor resulting in glacial change.

Key words: glacier, mass balance, ice volume, Qilian Mountains