GlacierMap is an online geography research project calling upon contributions from the general public to help map all the glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca of the Peruvian Andes.
The App was designed with two primary purposes: the first, to promote education of glacier change and the knock-on impacts for downstream communities and environments; the second, to collect data on glacier area change in the region through 'crowd sourcing' and contribute to the understanding of rate of glacial retreat in response to climate pressures.
GlacierMap is a project initiatied by Societal Impacts of Glacier Melt in the Andes (SIGMA), a UK-Peru collaboration investigating the downstream consequences of Andean glacier change for water resources in the Rio Santa Catchment, Peru. It is led by the University of Plymouth (UK) and the Instituto Geofísico del Perú (Peru).
How you can help
This project is calling for support from the general public to map glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca of the Peruvian Andes. Participation should take around 20 minutes in total. First, participants will be asked a few simple questions in order to build a very general profile of their background knowledge. Subsequently, a step-by-step guide will show participants how to digitally map an image of a glacier, providing an opportunity to practice. Participants will then be asked to map a glacier from the mountains of Peru for two different years, and will be asked for their opinion on the topic of glacial retreat and climate change.
The glaciers mapped in GlacierMap will form part of a large collection of publicly mapped glaciers in Peru – a ‘citizen science glacier inventory’ for use in scientific research – while the questions answered will contribute to a scientific study on glacial retreat and climate change.
Cover image: Angelo Villalobos
