A pioneering study has revealed how climate change is impacting glacier-fed streams and the essential microbiomes they contain – which could change radically by the end of this century.
A pioneering study has revealed how climate change is impacting glacier-fed streams and the essential microbiomes they contain – which could change radically by the end of this century.
Climate change is causing the world’s glaciers to disappear at an alarming rate. Scientists have been studying and modeling this process for years, but until now, no research group has specifically examined how glacier melt will affect glacier-fed streams and their ecosystems. A study carried out under the Vanishing Glaciers project, led by EPFL, has been recently published in Nature Communications. It establishes the very first forecasts of what these streams and their microbiomes could look like by century-end under various climate-change scenarios.
Essential Sources for the World’s Main Rivers
“Glacier-fed streams are the sources of some of the world’s largest river systems, supplying vital water to billions of people,” says Hannes Peter, a scientist at EPFL’s River Ecosystems Laboratory (RIVER) and a co-author of the study. “If we take Switzerland as an example, nearly all its main rivers – including the Rhone, Inn and Adige – derive from glacier-fed streams. So the changes that take place at high altitudes have a direct impact on everything that occurs downstream. That’s why it’s so important to understand how melting glaciers will affect these streams and their unique microbial ecosystems.
Read more at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Photo Credit: Lockenkopf via Pixabay
