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A Qualitative Assessment of Contemporary Glacier Loss in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru, Using Repeat Photography
Yanamarey (Figuras 22-24)
Figure 22. Yanamarey (5237 m) from Laguna Querococha in
1936. Photo: H. Kinzl.
Figure 23. Yanamarey from Laguna Querococha in 1998. The
red lines show the extent of the ice in 1936, now largely gone.
Photo: A. Byers.
Figure 24. Panorama of Yanamarey and Laguna Querococha in 2009. Photo: A. Byers.
Discussion: Contemporary Glacier Loss and
Role of Repeat Photography
As demonstrated by the preceding photo essay, glaciers
in the Cordillera Blanca have changed dramatically
during the past 100+ years. In fact, they began receding
and forming glacial lakes in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries (Carey, 2010), some 80-100 years before similar
processes began occurring in the Himalayas and elsewhere
(Bolch, Pieczonka and Benn, 2011; ICIMOD, 2008).
Several contributing factors to the Blanca’s earlier response
to warming trends includes its glaciers’ lack of a buffering
debris-cover (Benn and Evans, 2010), lower altitudes
compared with other high mountain glaciers, low surface
gradients that can encourage the formation of glacial lakes
(Quincey et al., 2007; C. Portocarrero, pers. comm. 2011),
and generally lower latitudes than their Himalayan and
other high mountain counterparts. Associated hazards and
problems have included a series of catastrophic glacial lake
outburst floods (GLOF) since the early 1940s that have
killed thousands of people (Carey, 2010), other glacier-
related hazards such as the destruction of Yungay in 1970
by an earthquake-triggered glacial ice avalanche and debris
flow (Carey, 2008; Evans et al., 2009), uncertainties related
to future water supplies for both rural and urban dwellers
alike (Instituto de Montaña, 2013), and negative impacts on
some forms of adventure tourism (e.g., mountaineering).
As noted by Carey (2010), more than 25,000 people were
killed in the Cordillera Blanca in glacier-related disasters
Revista de Glaciares y Ecosistemas de Montaña 2 (2017): 31-40
during the 20th century, the highest of any region in the
high mountain world (see also: Evans et al., 2009; Wegner,
2014). The Peruvian Government’s establishment of a
Glaciological Unit in the 1950s led to the lowering and/
or control of 35 dangerous glacial lakes (Portocarrero,
2013), using techniques developed by its own engineers.
Today, however, continued warming trends, the melting
of permafrost, accelerated growth of glacial lakes, and
destabilization of overhanging ice are signaling a new
era of possibly accelerated glacier, glacial lake, and high
mountain risks and hazards (W. Haeberli, pers. comm.
2013). The city of Huaraz, for example, which experienced
a GLOF from Laguna Palcacocha on 13 December, 1941
that killed an estimated 1,800 people (Wegner, 2014: 41),
is once again highly vulnerable to a Palcacocha flood
because of the lake’s accelerated re-growth since the
1970s, de-stabilization of overhanging ice, and current
lack of an early warning system (Rivas et al., 2015; Somos
et al., 2016).
In order to confront the growing number of climate
change-related challenges to life and property within the
Cordillera Blanca and other high mountain regions of the
world, the continued development and refinement of a
range of descriptive and predictive tools will be necessary.
Remote sensing, for example, has proven to be particularly
effective in the quantification and predictive modeling
of climate change phenomena upon high mountain
environments (e.g., glacial lake attributes, risk of flooding;
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