With the problem of melting glaciers, how do we solve the problem of the shortage of glacier runoff? Humans always have technology as a solution, don’t we!

 

In Ladakh, a region in the Himalayas, the shortage of water has caused problems for agriculture, not allowing for farmers to grow their crops. In the 1980s, a civil engineer named Chewang Norphel came up with a plan to divert glacier runoff during summer into small reservoirs near the various villages with extensive canals and channels. This allowed the glacier runoff to be stored through autumn and frozen in winter. These artificial glaciers only melt when the temperatures rise in spring, before the natural glaciers melt; This is the period when the shortage of glacier runoff is the greatest. This is because the artificial glaciers are at a lower altitude than the natural ones, at about 3900m compared to natural glaciers at an elevation of about 5400m.

Sonam Wangchuk, an Indian engineer, saw that these artificial glaciers melted too fast as they have large surface areas which absorbed more heat from the sun. To solve this problem, Wangchuk draws water from glacial water sources in higher elevations with underground pipes which direct this water to lower altitudes near villages. The water spouts from a tall pipe pointing towards the sky, which freeze before contacting the ground. These artificial cones of ice are called Ice Stupas, and some stand 18m tall, storing about 2000000 litres of water. Taking the daily water consumption of a person in Singapore to be 141 litres, that is about 39 years of water supply, or almost the entire volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. This video from BBC News shows the very interesting process.

 

However, every solution comes with its set of problems. Villages downstream of this water diversion have raised concerns that this reduces the amount of water they have for farming. Does Wangchuk or Norphel have the right to intervene with nature by diverting glacier flows? As our impact on the climate and environment grows, I feel that we must increasingly take matters in our own hands and manage our problems before it becomes too late.

 

Hello, I hope everyone has been well.

Today we’ll be discussing the conflict between humans and glaciers. As I was reading about glaciers, I came across this quote which really resonated with me-

“As glaciers are more and more iconized with climate change, everything else about a glacier seems to fall away — their immense diversity and their complexity. Glaciers are increasingly reduced, simplified and detached from environments, from people, from socio-political-cultural processes. Instead, they’re known more for their single association with climate change.”

This quote is from a Ted Idea article by the glaciologist M Jackson, which you can read here.

Many people have many different experiences with glaciers, some positive and some negative. Glacial melting is seen as a good thing by some Icelanders, who feel at ease knowing that receding glaciers would no longer be able to cause damage to them and their homes. There are many stories associated with glaciers, so let me share one with you.

 

This story is set on the border of Chile and Argentina, where the mining company Barrick Gold started the Pascua Lama project, a mining expedition which was set to remove parts of glacier to get to the gold underneath it. It was a huge expedition, which planned to remove 10 hectares of glacier ice (about 18.7 football fields) with a thickness of 3-5 metres. This had not taken into account the roads that had to be made for access to the mining area which would impact even more glaciers. A glacier the size of a football field, with a thickness of 3 metres holds about 30,000,000 litres of water, enough to sustain a person in Singapore for 582 years, given that Singapore’s per capita household daily water consumption was 141 litres in 2018. Not to forget the fact that glaciers are able to replenish their water stores as more snow falls and compacts on the glacier as mentioned in my previous post. Furthermore, the dust and soot from vehicles around the area had darkened the glacial ice, expediting the glacial melting as the ice absorbs more energy.

 

In Argentina at that time, there were no laws protecting glaciers. Barrick Gold had only mentioned a few glaciers in its environmental analysis done before starting its work, but Juan Pablo Milana, a glaciologist, had found that there were 50 in the immediate vicinity of the Pascua Lama and several hundred that exist on the access roads there. The number of glaciers around the San Juan province had not been properly researched before. If people did not know these glaciers existed, how could they protect them?  Until 2010, no laws existed to protect glaciers.

 

 

 

From this, we can understand how the lack of awareness can be dangerous for our environment. There are many stakeholders involved in the protection of glaciers. The issue of glacial melting is complex, and from this event we learn how such economic motives can hinder our fight against environmental problems.

I will be discussing more on this issue next week, so until then, stay safe!

References:

Glaciers: The Politics of Ice by Jorge Daniel Taillant

Hey everyone, I hope you all are excited to read this week’s post, because I sure was to write it!

 

I want to start with a survey that I conducted in the past week. The survey I conducted previously showed that the most people thought glacial melting was very urgent, and that the loss of biodiversity was the least urgent.

I decided to combine these 2 problems and ask- How important is the impact of glacial melting on biodiversity to you?

I surveyed 41 respondents- 28 males and 13 females, with an average age of 23.2, of which 90.2% were either undergraduates or graduates not from environmental studies, and the other 9.8% being secondary and primary school students.

 

What I gather from this is that although people do see the importance in the problem of glacial melting, some of them do not see the importance in the potential loss of biodiversity. What do you think of this?

 

When I asked what they thought the impacts of glacial melting on biodiversity were, this is what I got:

How accurate is this? Let’s find out.

 

This week, I would like to investigate the role that glaciers play in sustaining wildlife.

 

As glaciers are barren and cold, with temperatures dropping to -55.4 degrees Celsius in the Greenland Ice Sheet, not many organisms live on them. Some animals that live on them include the Himalayan Wingless Glacier Midge and the Ice worm in New Zealand glaciers. They survive by consuming glacial algae and bacteria.

 

However, if we look at the animals that visit glaciers for other purposes, it paints a totally different picture! Animals visit glaciers for various purposes, like caching their food, for temporary escape from the heat, travel and even for fun. The wolverine caches its food in glaciers, preserving its food for periods when food is lacking. Animals like the brown bear and snow leopard have been seen travelling on glaciers, presumably because glaciers are easier to traverse than the mountainous surroundings.

 

Melting glaciers leave these animals with no avenue for these activities. However, looking at the issue from a different perspective, we can see how animals start to populate areas left behind by retreating glaciers. In Norway, beetles, spiders and springtails that feed on algae have been found residing in such areas.

This doesn’t make the melting of glaciers ok, but it shows us how resilient and opportunistic life on Earth is.

 

Of course, glacial runoff also flows into many rivers around the world (as mentioned in my previous post) and sustains many ecosystems.

 

The impacts of melting glaciers on wildlife are numerous and complex. The impacts go beyond the direct effects their melting will have on the wildlife that live on or around the glaciers. They affect wildlife indirectly, through the rising sea levels and global temperatures, which would lead to more frequent extreme weather events, such as floods and droughts, posing a danger to wildlife.

 

I hope this post has brought you some insight on glaciers and wildlife. I’ll see you next week!

(On a side note, here’s a video by BBC of cute otters around a glacier calving event.)