Scientists witness Venezuelan glacier's final days as it melts away

Blackouts shut off refrigerators where scientists keep ir lab samples. Gas shorts mean y sometimes have to work from home. y even reuse sheets of paper to record field data because fresh supplies are so scarce. As ir country falls apart, a hardy team of scientists in Venezuela is determined to transcend political and ecomic turmoil to record what happens as country’s last glacier vanishes. Temperatures are warming faster at Earth’s higher elevations than in lowlands, and scientists predict that glacier — an ice sheet in Andes Mountains — could be gone within two decades.

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Venezuelan Glacier in its final moments

“If we left and came back in 20 years, we would have missed it,” says Luis Daniel Llambí, a mountain ecologist at University of Andes in Mérida. Scientists say Venezuela will be first country in South America to lose all its glaciers. Throughout history, glaciers have waxed and waned numerous times. But rapid pace of glacial retreat over past century and a half, accelerated by human activities and burning of fossil fuels, creates a new urgency — and opportunity — for scientists to understand how freshly exposed rock forms new soil and eventually new ecosystems. While most of planet’s ice is stored in polar regions, re are also glaciers in some mountaius regions of tropics — primarily in South America. 

“Practically all of high-mountain tropical glaciers are in Andes. re’s still a little bit on Mount Kilimanjaro,” says Robert Hofstede, a tropical ecologist in Ecuador who advises international ncies such as World Bank and United Nations. Monitoring Venezuela’s Humboldt glacier depends on continuous visits, Llambí tes. And even in best of circumstances, it’s easy trek from small mountain town of Mérida to ice sheet perched within Venezuela’s Sierra Nevada National Park at nearly 16,500 feet (5,000 meters) above sea level. When Llambí and three or scientists made journey this spring to scout out mountain terrain for a new research project, y first rode a cable car, n walked a full day to base camp, pitching ir tents in drizzling rain.

Each day, y n had to climb an additional three hours to reach glacier, at times donning helmets and holding tight to ropes to maeuvre up steep boulders. Some of scientists had waterproofed ir worn-out old boots using melted candle wax. Mountain fieldwork always is physically gruelling, but deepening crisis in Venezuela since death of former president Hugo Chavez in 2013 has transformed even simple tasks into immense hurdles. “Things that you rmally take for granted for research — internet, gas, electricity — all become scarce and unpredictable,” Llambí says. Perhaps hardest toll has been watching many of ir colleagues and students leave, joining more than 4 million people who have fled Venezuela’s political upheaval in recent years. “Every week, someone asks me why I haven’t left,” says Alejandra Melfo, a team member who is a physicist at University of Andes.

t w, she tells anyone who asks. “Climate change is real and has to be documented,” she says. “We have to be re.” Institute of Environmental and Ecological Sciences at University of Andes was founded 50 years ago, in 1969, and scientists re see mselves as custodians of long-term data monitoring how temperatures and plant life are changing in region, including in Andean ecosystem kwn as paramos — a mist-covered mountain grassland that lies between top of tree line and bottom of glacier.

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Characteristics of Venezuelan Glacier

While most tundras have sparse vegetation, paramos is famous for striking plants called frailejones that can be taller than humans and resemble a cross between a cactus and a palm tree. se mountain grasslands also store and release water that sustains cities and croplands furr downslope. It’s hard to overstate importance of Andean glaciers in maintaining regional water cycles. “More than 50 million people in South America rely on water provision from Andes,” says Francisco Cuesta, a tropical ecologist at University of Americas in Quito, Ecuador, who marvels at dogged work team is doing under such punishing conditions. “To me, it’s incredible that y are still doing research re,” Cuesta says.

region is one of front lines of climate change. Glaciers in tropical Andes have been retreating faster than most or glaciers since scientists began keeping detailed records in 1970s because tropical latitudes get more direct sunlight and radiation. When a glacier melts away, at first only bedrock is left behind — sometimes rough gravel and sometimes smooth rock, worn down by centuries or millenniums of grinding ice. But within a few years or decades, bacteria and lichen began to colonize area. As y decompose minerals of rock and ir bodies n decay into organic matter, first hints of soil begin to form. And soil is basis of a new ecosystem, providing a structure to retain water and for plant roots to grow. “ formation of soil is difference between an ecosystem being able to form quickly and being stalled for hundreds of years,” Llambí says.

On rocks left behind when glacier retreats, scientists think that a new ecosystem resembling paramos may eventually begin to develop. But re are many questions still to answer: Will it take decades to form new soil? Can plant and animal species that thrive at lower elevations also survive furr upslope? Will y be able to adapt to continually changing temperatures? Venezuela has world’s largest kwn oil reserves, but an ecomy hitched for decades to global oil demand has proven unstable. Llambí believes he has a special obligation to help inform public of impacts of climate change in a country where boom-and-bust cycle of fossil fuel exploration has shaped nearly everyone’s life. “Our university is in Mérida, which has long been called ‘ city of eternal sw,‘” he reflects. “We are discovering that ‘eternity’ is t forever, and that’s what we have to get used to in a world with climate change.”

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