Glacier is one of the most important freshwater repositories on the earth surface. Contrary to other regions of Tibetan Plateau,glaciers on the Karakoram Mountains were found to show a slow retreat or even advancement, which was often called asKarakoram anomaly. Based on the Landsat TM/ETM + /OLI remote sensing data of 1993,2000 and 2016,the glacier boundaries within the Gilgit River Basin over the western part of Karakorum can be delimited for three stages by means of visual interpretation. The results showed that: ( 1) From 1993 to 2016, the glacier area in the Gilgit River Basin had shrunk by almost 45. 82 9. 07 km~2,which accounted for 4. 07 0. 80% of the total area of glaciers in 1993. Among them,average annual shrinkage rate of glacier area during the period from 1993 to 2000 was 0. 19 0. 02%,and the figure from 2000 to 2016 was 0. 17 0. 03%, which indicates that the glacier shrinkage in the study area showed a slight slowing trend in the past 15 years. ( 2) From 1993 to 2016,the average atrophy rate of glaciers with an area of < 0. 1 km~2 was as high as 12. 12%, while that of glaciers with an area of > 10. 0 km~2 was only 0. 38%. Although glaciers in the Gilgit River Basin were generally in a state of shrinkage,the shrinkage rate tended to be related with their orientations: glaciers facing northeastward suffered from the largest shrinkage,while those facing westward had the smallest shrinkage rate. ( 3) In the study area,12 glaciers showed advancement between 1993 and 2016,among which,the glacier coded G073768E36822N had the largest advancing rate,as its glacier terminus had advanced by 477 m from 1996 to 1999 with an advancing rate of 159 m·a~(-1). ( 4) In the past 40 years,there was increasing trends in temperature over the Gilgit River Basin,while the precipitation had decreased first and then increased. Our analyses show that the rising temperature is the main cause of glacier shrinkage,while the increase in precipitation compensates for the glacier loss due to warming.