DUSHANBE, August 8, Asia-Plus — Silk Road Newsline reports that according to Dr. Christine Hulbe, Chair of the Department of Geology at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, and current (2009-2012) vice-president of the International Glaciological Society, cooperation between the U.S. and Tajikistan in studying and monitoring mountain glaciers would be beneficial to both countries and to the world scientific community.
“In a place like Tajikistan, there is a lot of local knowledge about changes in glaciers overtime. There’s a lot of local knowledge about how changes in glaciers affect water and affect the ecosystems that use that water and the communities that use that water. So I think not only can the global community bring some information to Tajikistan, I think the people of Tajikistan have something to share with the rest of the world as well,” Dr. Hulbe told Silk Road Newsline in an interview at a recently held 22d Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) meeting in Portland.
“Something that’s important about glacier studies is that we see different sorts of processes unfolding or same fundamentals, but different details all over the world. And if we really want to have the most robust understanding possible, we need to work in as many different kinds of places as possible,” she says. “The stories that we tell looking at glaciers in Alaska for example, are similar to, but not the same as the stories that we take from studying glaciers in Tajikistan and if we look at both places, we’ll have a more complete understanding of both how the glaciers work and how they change over time.”
Portland State University is one of several research universities that are involved in glacier studies in the U.S. With funding from the National Science Foundation, NASA, the US Geological Survey, and the National Park Service, the Geology and Geography departments at Portland State University have been conducting a number of research projects on the glaciers of the American West, including in Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.
Several studies at Portland State have been specifically focused on geology, hydrology and glacier retreat in Washington, the second most glaciated state in the US, with 3,101 glaciers covering 449 km2 in the mountains, including Mount Rainier with its 33 named glaciers, the largest number of glaciers on a single peak anywhere in the contiguous United States. Mount Rainier’s Emmons Glacier has the largest area of any glacier in the contiguous United States.
“Glaciers are rapidly shrinking due to climate warming. This is true not only for the American West, but for most other regions of the world as well. Perhaps glaciers are the clearest expression of climate change. Second, assessment of glacier cover and its change is important to regional stream flow and global sea level,” the introduction to the Portland State “Glaciers of the American West” project says.
According to Dr. Hulbe, Portland State has been actively exchanging data with researchers in other countries and hosting students interested in glaciers studies from other countries as far as China. Dr. Hulbe says the international scientific community would greatly benefit from similar exchanges with Tajikistan, home to at least six large glaciers in the Pamir mountains, including the 77 kilometers long Fedchenko Glacier, the longest glacier in the world outside of the polar regions.
According to UNEP, an estimated 40 percent of the world’s population could be affected by loss of snow and glaciers in the mountains of Asia, including the Pamir mountains in Central Asia. Significant loss of glaciers in Central Asia began around the 1930s, became more dramatic in the second half of the 20th century and continued into the 21st century. Glacier area was reduced by 25–30 percent in the Tien Shan, by 30–35 percent in the Pamirs, including its largest Fedchenko Glacier, and by more than 50 percent in northern Afghanistan, the UNEP data shows.
“In Tajikistan, glaciers play a lot of roles, not only are they important for thinking about water resources, but also glaciers in these frozen landscapes are important for thinking about slope stability, the nature of water flow, over the course of the year, the nature of the sediment load within the water, so are there small particles, large particles, how much sediment is being carried downstream, potentially causing erosion further downstream or filling in reservoirs up in the mountains, and all those things are changing right now,” Dr. Hulbe says. “If we understand glacier change, if we study and think about it, those effects are going to happen, but we can plan for them. We can think, well, if the sediment load in the rivers is changing, what are we going to do about that? Do we need to change the way we’re building dams? Do we need to change the way we think about managing water? And all those things — I think all of these challenges can be met. We can face them, but we can only do that if we understand them first.”
