tagged w/ Andes Mountains
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A countdown of stories about unusual sights and exciting journeys. Part 5 takes us on a hiking trip through beautiful Patagonia, where good beer & food awaits us after a long journey.A countdown of stories about unusual sights and exciting journeys. Part 5 takes us on... more
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Five hundred years ago, three Inca children were left to freeze high in the cold Argentinian Andes as a religious sacrifice. In time, their bodies mummified, having been swallowed in snow and entombed within the glacier, lost to time. But centuries later, in a warmer world, their perfectly-preserved corpses were discovered beneath the melting snow -- an increasingly common sight. Experts say that as glaciers continue to recede throughout the world, more of their long-guarded secrets will be revealed in the warm grip of a changing climate.
When the three Inca children were discovered thanks to melting in the Andes, their well-preserved, mummified remains helped advance archeological knowledge of their rather mysterious civilization. But some more recently deceased individuals uncovered by the receding glaciers has helped bring closure to mourning families.
For example, the frozen body of 24-year-old pilot, Benjamin Rafael Pabón, was discovered by hikers in Peru -- over 20 years after his plane crashed in the Andes. If not for global warming's effect on Andean glaciers, his fate might have remained a mystery forever.
"It took me a very long time to acknowledge he might be dead," said the pilot's mother. "Now we have a body. I can visit my son at his burial site and grieve like any mother has a right to do."
A recent report from The New York Times sheds light on several fascinating discoveries that have been made amid the melting ice of some of the world's most threatened snow packs.
Scientists say the retreat of the ice is an unexpected boon for those yearning to peer back in time.
"It looks like the warming trend seen in many regions is continuing," said Gerald Holdsworth, a glaciologist at the Arctic Institute of North America in Calgary, Alberta. "There are still some large snowbanks left in promising places, and many glaciers of all different shapes, orientations and sizes, so the finds could go on for a long time yet."
Some discoveries are personal, allowing families closure after years of mourning loved ones who appeared to have vanished.
As global warming continues to cast open these icy graves, such long-preserved corpses are subject to decay and exposure to the elements. For the three sacrificed Inca children who rested so for centuries suspended in time on an Andean glacier, now a climate-controlled casing at an Argentine museum keeps them from decay.
While the degrading affects of passing years seems to pause for those trapped within the ice, for the glaciers, time itself may be running out. In the past few decades, a warming climate in this region has taken its toll on the frozen landscape, threatening the livelihoods of people in the region. Impacted nations have enacted measures to combat the melting, but localized efforts stand little chance in combating the problem without international support.
Scientists say that more bodies will likely be uncovered as the snow continues to melt -- drawing the dead from their icy graves and reuniting them with a world warmer than the one they left.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/01/global-warming-uncovers-corpses-frozen-in-time.phpFive hundred years ago, three Inca children were left to freeze high in the cold... more
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The past decade has brought the dangers of climate change into sharp relief, often most clearly through images.
In the Arctic, scientific expeditions this year found increasingly thin ice and surprisingly open seas. Higher up, photographers documented the disappearance of glaciers, includes some in the Andes and the Himalayas that provide fresh water to billions of people. On lower lands, drought threatened crops and lives from China to Kenya, Australia to California.
Here’s a look at some of the most worrisome environmental changes through the lenses of scientists, satellites, explorers and humanitarians. ...
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20091231/images-changing-planetThe past decade has brought the dangers of climate change into sharp relief, often... more
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"Fencing Flamingos" follows the work of Marita Davison, a PhD student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, and her collaborator Jennifer Moslemi as they study flamingos in the rugged high-Andes of Bolivia."Fencing Flamingos" follows the work of Marita Davison, a PhD student in... more
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Fears are growing for the future of water supplies in one of Latin America's fastest-growing urban areas - Bolivia's sprawling capital of La Paz and its twin El Alto.
Scientists monitoring the glaciers high in the Andes mountains - a key source of water - say the ice is showing signs of shrinking faster than previously forecast.
Faced with a booming population and a combination of glacial retreat and reduced rainfall, the governor of the La Paz region is even contemplating moving people to other parts of Bolivia.
Water is already in short supply among the poorest communities and has become a cause of tension.
It's a problem that begins now but will become more serious as other, much larger glaciers melt as well
Dr Edson Ramirez
In pictures: Bolivia glaciers
In El Alto's District 8, I watched 13-year-old Christian Muraga fill a bucket from a communal tap shared with 80 families.
I asked if the tap always produces water.
"No, there isn't water every day from this tap, sometimes nothing."
The nearest alternative is nearly one kilometre away. Campaign groups say as many as one quarter of the city's population do not have ready access to water.
Sergio Criales of Oxfam told me: "The problem is getting worse because of climate change and because they don't have enough water to cover all their demands."
Water battle
The tap was established illegally and draws water from the scarce mains supply running in a neighbouring district.
Christian's father Macario said that there are often disputes over access to water and that fights occasionally break out.
Water has become so precious that we even found a group of women cleaning plastic bags in a heavily contaminated stream that stank of raw sewage.
When I asked why they were doing this, one replied that she had no alternative.
La Paz (BBC)
Much of the city's water supply comes from glaciers
"There is no other water to use. I know it is dirty and I am worried about my children. But what can I do?"
The shortage of fresh water is partly the result of the influx of tens of thousands of people to El Alto every year leaving the authorities unable to cope.
But another factor is a rise in temperature that's faster than the global average and its effect on the snow-capped peaks that dominate the skyline.
Click Picture to see video.Fears are growing for the future of water supplies in one of Latin America's... more
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Fascinating footage of mountaineering penguins in the Andes trying to search for a safe mountain nesting ground. Also featuring weird and wonderful animals such as the Andes possum, the littlest deer in the world known as the pudu, and the tiniest wild cat in existence - the cod cod. Brilliant nature video from BBC animal wildlife show Andes - The Dragons Back.Fascinating footage of mountaineering penguins in the Andes trying to search for a... more
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Sixteen thousand five hundred feet up into the Andes, deep inside the Atacama Desert, lies this barren, windswept plateau of maroon rock and sand. One of the driest places on Earth, the table-top-flat Chajnantor is nothing short of a wasteland, offering few humans reason to tread here. Until now.
Giant excavators and construction equipment operate in the distance as I labor to breathe in the thin air while walking toward a gleaming metal and glass building. I've come to get an in-depth progress report on the construction of what will be the planet's most advanced land-based telescope: the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.
Consisting of 66 radio antennas spread across 10 miles and linked to the world's most extensive superconducting electronic receiving system, ALMA will peer into regions of space never seen before. The Chajnantor Plain was chosen following a worldwide search due to its cloudless skies and razor-thin atmosphere, which will allow the antennas' super-sensitive receivers to detect electromagnetic wavelengths of less than a hair's width, down to 0.3 millimeters. By tapping the millimeter/submillimeter spectrum, ALMA will soon generate images of the cold universe, dim areas of gas and dust where new stars form. For the first time, astronomers should be able to see 14 billion years into the past, to the formation of the earliest galaxies.
Researchers will move the antennas to shrink or expand the array, creating a giant zoom lens with resolutions 10 times better than that of the Hubble Space Telescope. Funded by a consortium of astronomical organizations from North America, Europe and Japan, the $1.3 billion project is scheduled for completion in 2012. But first it must be built.
"Nothing like this has ever been done before," says Adrian Russell, ALMA project manager for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, one of the American sponsors. "We are delivering a lot of very complex, sensitive and expensive hardware to a remote and challenging site where it all must be assembled."
My visit begins at the Operations Support Facilities site at 10,000 ft., where I arrive following a 9-mile drive up a dusty road after turning off Chilean Route 23 and passing through a guard station. With its modern metal and glass buildings, the OSF site resembles a high-tech campus in Silicon Valley. Known as "the low site," this is the base camp for ALMA with housing for 500, a power station, cantina, cinema, medical clinic, stop signs and streetlights. Technicians will operate the antennas from here. This is also where engineers are assembling the antennas after trucking in the parts from the port of Antofagasta 180 miles away.
Sixteen thousand five hundred feet up into the Andes, deep inside the Atacama Desert,... more
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A study of microbes beneath the retreating Puca Glacier at 16,400 feet in the Peruvian Andes is the first to show how life becomes established with implications for how life might have once flourished on Mars.
Global climate change has accelerated the pace of glacial retreat in high latitude and high-elevation environments, exposing lands that have been devoid of vegetation for centuries or millennia, said
Steve Schmidt of the University of Colorado at Boulder, department of ecology and evolutionary biology. He likened the high Andes to the harsh Dry Valleys of Antarctica, under study by researchers from NASA's Astrobiology Institute because of hostile conditions believed to be similar to those on portions of Mars.
"The most startling finding was how much the diversity increased in just four years in what was seemingly barren soil," said Schmidt. Another unexpected finding on the Puca Glacier was how microbes stabilized the soil and prevented erosion on the slope by using their filament-like structure to weave soil particles together in a matrix, Schmidt said. The CU-Boulder researchers also found the microbes excrete a glue-like sugar compound to further bond soil particles.
Read the full article
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/09/retreating-ande.html#moreA study of microbes beneath the retreating Puca Glacier at 16,400 feet in the Peruvian... more
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