© Simon CookGlacier and lake near the villages of Pelechuco and Agua Blanca in the Apolobamba region, northern Bolivia.
A new study published in
The Cryosphere, an European Geosciences Union journal, has found that
Bolivian glaciers shrunk by 43% between 1986 and 2014, and will continue to diminish if temperatures in the region continue to increase.
"On top of that, glacier recession is leaving lakes that could burst and wash away villages or infrastructure downstream," said lead-author Simon Cook, a lecturer at the Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK.
Receding glaciers also put water supply in the region at risk.
Glacial meltwater is important for irrigation, drinking water and hydropower, both for mountain villages and large cities such as La Paz and El Alto. Throughout the year, the 2.3 million inhabitants of these two cities receive about 15% of their water supply from glaciers, with this percentage almost doubling during the dry season.
Glacier retreat also means less water is available to supply rivers and lakes, such as southern Bolivia's Lake Poopó, which recently dried up.
The new study is one of the first to monitor recent large-scale glacier change in Bolivia, to better understand how receding glaciers could affect communities in the country. "The novelty of our study lies in the bigger picture — measuring glacier change over all main glaciated ranges in Bolivia — and in the identification of potentially dangerous lakes for the first time," Cook said.
Comment: Wow! That's a first!
However, this same city experienced a spate of giant sinkholes back in 2013:
Samara: The Russian city being 'eaten alive' as cars, buses and trucks disappear, swallowed by giant sinkholes