Project Funding: 2011 - 2014

NRA: 2009 NASA: Land Cover / Land Use Change   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
The tropical glaciers of Peru and Bolivia are the keystone element of regional pastoral agricultural systems that support large Andean populations. The glacier meltwaters sustain associated alpine peatbogs, and these in turn provide critical year-round islands of nutritious forage for an extensive highland system of pastoral agricultural that has endured for several millennia. However, as rapid climate change continues and tropical Andean glaciers recede, the consequences for peatbogs, and the pastoral agriculture they support, are not well understood. Our proposed research will identify the impacts by first quantifying recent glacier and peatbog landcover change, and then analyzing these changes in concert with data on climate, hydrology, and pastoral production to determine drivers of landscape change and impacts on land use. Our proposed research will map glacier and peatbog extent over the past 30 years using satellite imagery, and couple these landcover maps with surface measurements to model the regional to meso-scale climate and hydrological drivers of peatbog change and to predict the impact of these changes on pastoral agriculture. This proposal directly addresses both solicitation components: (1) detection, we will map the extent of glacier and peatbog landcovers and identify change in these over the past three decades of available imagery; and (2) drivers, we will model the hydrologic drivers of peatbog change (an important component of which will be the current rate of glacier recession, as quantified in the first component), and we will examine the socio-economic implications of changes in peatbog extent on pastoral agriculture. The proposed work also meets other solicitation guidelines: it has a very strong remote sensing component; the work is centered on a large mountainous region (in the tropical Andes), approximately 1500 km in length; and the work involves a multi-disciplinary social scientist who has directly relevant research experience in the region. The monitoring of Andean glaciers and hydrological assessments have been recognized as important research topics for the Andes, where global warming is expected to cause a significant impact at higher elevations. Satellite-based glacier-extent studies, providing regional coverage, have also been identified as a research priority for environmental monitoring and planning.

2011 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• The Impact of Disappearing Tropical Andean Glaciers on Pastoral Agriculture   --   (Dan Slayback, Karina Yager, Karen Mohr, Compton Tucker, Bryan Mark, Anton Seimon)   [abstract]