Melting in Andes Reveals Remains and Wreckage

In the eateries of La Paz, Bolivia where experienced climbers gather over plates of grilled llama and bottles of Paceña beer to swap tales of mountaineering feats of bravery and skill, they assume an air of boredom when the discussion includes the 19,974-foot-high Huayna Potosí.

“A training climb,” scoffs climber, who guides foreigners up the mountains of Bolivia, which boasts peaks higher than the Alps and the Rockies.

Bravado fades, however, when talk shifts to what climbers are discovering on Huayna Potosí’s glacier: crumpled fuselage, decades-old pieces of wings and propellers, and, in November, the frozen body of Benjamin Pabon Galindo's (right) was recovered from Huayna Potosi mountain, where his plane crashed due to mechanical problems in 1990. At the time of the crash Pabon was flying a load of beef from the northern region of Beni to La Paz.

The body of the other pilot aboard the plane was recovered in 1997, while Pabon's remains were located Sunday by climbers hired by his family.

The body was intact with "the clothing and everything", but it was frozen and broke apart while being pulled out of the pilot's seat, the crash victim's father, Carlos Pabon, said.

“When I found the pilot, he was still strapped into his seat, crunched over like he was sleeping, some black hair falling from his skull,” said Eulalio González, 49, the climber who carried Mr. Pabón’s mummified body down the mountain. “There are more ice mummies in the peaks above us,” he said. “Melting glaciers will bring them to us.”

The missing aviator was the great-grandson of Rafael Pabon, a hero of the 1932-35 Chaco War and the first fighter pilot in the Americas to win a dogfight in combat.

The discovery of Mr. Pabón’s partially preserved remains was one of a growing number of finds pulled from the world’s glaciers and snow fields in recent years as warmer temperatures cause the ice and snow to melt, exposing their long-held secrets. The bodies that have emerged were mummified naturally, with extreme cold and dry air performing the work that resins and oils did for ancient Egyptians and other cultures.

Up and down the spine of the Andes, long plagued by airplane crashes and climbing mishaps, the discoveries are helping to solve decades-old mysteries.

In one such find, in the late ’90s, climbers on Mount Tupungato in Argentina discovered parts the wreckage of the Star Dust, a fabled British aircraft rumored to have disappeared in 1947 with a cargo of gold.

The climbers found no treasure at the crash site of the Avro Lancastrian plane flown by British South American Airways. But they did discover a preserved torso and a hand with pointed, manicured fingernails, an eerie fashion relic of 1940s London that served as testament to the fate of the plane’s passengers and crew.

Scientists say the retreat of the ice is an unexpected boon for those yearning to peer back in time.

“It looks like the warming trend seen in many regions is continuing,” said Gerald Holdsworth, a glaciologist at the Arctic Institute of North America in Calgary, Alberta. “There are still some large snowbanks left in promising places, and many glaciers of all different shapes, orientations and sizes, so the finds could go on for a long time yet.”

Some discoveries are personal, allowing families closure after years of mourning loved ones who appeared to have vanished. Others have added alluring clues into the history of human migration, diet, health and ethnic origins, said María Victoria Monsalve, a pathologist at the University of British Columbia who studies ice mummies. (At left: mummy of Inca maiden)

She said some of the most valuable discoveries in recent years include three Inca child mummies found on the summit of Mount Llullaillaco in northern Argentina and a 550-year-old iceman discovered by sheep hunters in northern British Columbia.

Younger mummies can also add to the historical record. In 2004, three well-preserved soldiers were found in a scene of high-altitude fighting from World War I in the Italian Alps. And in 2006, a military lab in Hawaii pieced together the story of a World War II airman found on Darwin Glacier in California. Identified as Leo M. Mustonen, he was buried in his hometown, Brainerd, Minn.

Even Mr. Holdsworth, who as a glaciologist is generally more interested in the ice itself, has been closely monitoring the Malaspina Glacier in southeastern Alaska (see map at right), in part because he says he believes that it holds a plane that crashed near the Yukon border in 1951.

For the family of Rafael Pabón, the pilot found high in the Andes in November, the discovery was a relief of sorts. For two decades, his mother, Yolanda Galindo de Pabón, 69, had been tortured by thoughts of what had happened to him. She said she nurtured a theory that he might be wandering Bolivia’s provinces as a result of an accident. She wondered whether his plane could have been hijacked and flown across the border into Brazil.

The discovery of his body — still clad in the same white shirt and gray pants he wore when he lifted off with a cargo of beef carcasses from Bolivia’s eastern lowlands on Oct. 19, 1990 — at least put an end to the doubts.

“It took me a very long time to acknowledge he might be dead,” Ms. Pabón said. “Now we have a body. I can visit my son at his burial site and grieve like any mother has a right to do.”

The frozen corpse of Mr. Pabón’s co-pilot was discovered on Huayna Potosí in 1997. The cargo plane’s only other crew member, a mechanic named Walter Flores, has not been found.

Climbers here say they expect to find more remains as the country’s glaciers, like Chacaltaya — once said to be the site of the world’s highest ski resort — retreat. The resort closed in 2009 due to global warming, a full 6 years before it was forecast to be melted away. But far more than a ski run has been lost here--a crucial part of Bolivia's water supply has been disrupted as well.

La Paz’s main water supplies come from rainwater and melt-off from tropical glaciers in the Cordillera Real range, which includes Chacaltaya and the Tuni-Condoriri glacial system set in the mountains above the region’s largest reservoir.

The glaciers not only provide drinking water to Bolivian residents, but are also used to create power through hydroelectric dams--glacial runoff gives the region 80% of its electricity.

Climbers speak with a certain reverence of glaciers guarding plane wrecks stretching back decades, including a Hercules military cargo plane from the 1970s and smaller planes that crashed into mountains after encountering storms and poor visibility.

In at least one case, the mystery is unfolding in chapters, as layers of ice slowly reveal an old tragedy.

In 2006, a climbing team on Mount Illimani (right), Bolivia’s second-highest peak, rediscovered the wreckage of a Boeing 727 operated by Eastern Air Lines that crashed into the mountain shortly after takeoff on Jan. 1, 1985, killing all 29 people aboard.

No bodies were found at the time of the crash or during the 2006 ascent. But Roberto Gómez, 28, a climber who retrieved part of the Boeing’s fuselage, said it was only a matter of time before they surface as the glacier on Illimani melts. He has already found photographs, children’s clothing and, strangely, what seemed to be crocodile hides from the cargo hold at the crash site. “The bodies and the black box are still somewhere in the ice,” he said.

Aware of the fate which has often met those who dare challenge Bolivia’s peaks, some climbing guides here respectfully refer to the mountains as “achachila,” a word from the indigenous Aymara language that roughly translates as “earth spirit” or “uncle.” Before each ascent, they make offerings of coca leaves to the peaks they depend on for their livelihood. “The uncles guard many secrets,” said Mr. González, who found the body of Mr. Pabón, “just like the graveyards in their shadow.”

Source:
The New York Times, "Melting in Andes Reveals Remains and Wreckage", accessed January 19, 2011
Top News, "20 years after crash, pilot's body found in Bolivian Andes", accessed January 19, 2011

Warning over desertification

Forestry experts warned degraded grasslands are likely to speed up the processes of soil erosion and desertification, feeding the sandstorms that usually sweep North China in the spring.

"Overgrazing causes about 90 percent of grassland erosion, extending from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to the arid reaches of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region," Zhang Xinshi (right), professor of the Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said on Friday at the Sino-German expert consultation on climate change and combating desertification project in Beijing.

"Erratic rainfall coupled with serious desertification; these may both be the 'root cause' of the problem," added Dr Zhang Qianggong, research assistant at the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Institute of the China Academy of Sciences. He expressed that as the Qinghai-Tibet plateau is situated in the middle to upper reaches of the troposphere, the atmospheric conditions are severely unstable which allows sand and dust to enter the atmosphere and is having far-reaching effects.

In addition, the large shifting sand dunes and desertification of the land of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau also account for the increased sand and dust levels in the atmosphere. Now there are large and active sand dunes at the headlands of the Brahmaputra and its tributary valleys, the Yellow river and the Yangtze. Moreover, the area of desertification of the land has increased dramatically.

Restoring grasslands and controlling desertification have become an important part of China's fight against climate change, said Liu Tuo, director-general of the State Forestry Administration's national bureau to combat desertification.

While grasslands cover more than 40 percent of China, comprising about 400 million hectares, growing urbanization and overgrazing are encroaching on and damaging the country's green areas.

China already suffers from severe desertification (left), with about 2.6 million square kilometers of land - or more than 25 percent of the country's total land area - affected by the process, according to the latest statistics from the forestry administration.

It is estimated that desertification poses a threat to 400 million people who live in arid regions of China, which cover more than 33 percent of the country.

Zhang said sandstorms (right) follow a general route in China from the northwest to the southeast of the country.

Scientists found that sandstorms form above the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau from December to March every year, before gradually moving to the north, Shanghai Morning Post reported earlier this month.

The newspaper quoted scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences as having said that the plateau is likely to succumb to desertification if no effective measures are taken to halt the process, especially with less rain and rising temperatures in the area.

The average temperature in China has risen 1.1 degrees over the past five decades, while there has been a corresponding rise of 0.77 degrees on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau during the same period, according to Yang Weixi, chief engineer of the national bureau to combat desertification.

With the rising temperatures, the glacial area has contracted in western China and is currently 5.5 percent smaller than in the 1960s, Yang said.

Since the 1980s, the country's glaciers have lost nearly 587 billion cubic meters of water capacity, comparable to 10 times the annual runoff from the Yangtze River, he said.

There is expected to be a water shortage of about 20 billion cubic meters in western China by 2030, said Jiang Youxu, a scientist with the Research Institute of Forest Ecology, Environment and Protection at the Chinese Academy of Forestry.

Source:
China.org, "Warning over desertification", accessed November 24, 2010
The Daily Planet, "Sandstorms on the plateau", accessed November 24, 2010

National Parks Wrestle with Warming

As the world warms, officials at the National Park Service are starting to sweat: No glaciers at Glacier, no Joshua trees at Joshua Tree. These are part of the long-range forecast for the national parks.

Last month from Glacier National Park, Park Service director Jon Jarvis was not in a mood to mince words, calling climate change "the greatest threat to the integrity of the national park system that we've ever faced."

That assertion was underscored last week in a new report on potential impacts to the parks from climate change. The collaboration by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, attempted to zoom in on specific parks and projected changes ahead for ten national parks in California, as well as impacts on the state's economy. NRDC and RMCO have previously released reports on the impact of climate change on Jamestown and other Virginia areas, the impact of the Gulf oil spill on the Gulf, as well as a statement about the impact on the National Park system overall. To read these reports click here.

This recent report details how climate disruption could affect ten national parks in California. If emissions of heat-trapping gases are not limited, before the end of the century Yosemite National Park would become hotter than Sacramento historically has been. Temperature increases of this magnitude would have far-reaching impacts on Yosemite, Point Reyes National Seashore, and Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree, Death Valley, and Redwood national parks, and more of California's very special places.

Among a broad range of threats to the ten national parks identified in the report are:

• Joshua trees (right), which need winter freezes to set seeds, are projected to disappear entirely from the national park named after them, and from most of Death Valley National Park and Mojave National Preserve.

• In Redwood National Park and Muir Woods National Monument, higher temperatures already have reduced by 30 percent the coastal fog that redwoods depend on for nearly half their water supply. A continued decrease in the fog could keep the coast redwoods from growing to the astonishing heights that make them the world’s tallest trees.

• In Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite, giant sequoias in the mountains parks may not be resilient to the water stress and increased wildfire expected with rapid climate change.

• Yosemite Falls, mostly fed by snowmelt, could dry up more often and earlier in summers, depriving many park visitors of one of the world’s greatest sights.

• In Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon, as the parks have gotten hotter and drier, pine and fir trees are dying more quickly. The death rate of trees has nearly doubled over just the past two decades.

• Sea-level rise of 2.0 to 4.7 feet in this century, as projected by the California Climate Change Center, would lead to seas washing over in storms and then permanently inundating low-lying areas in Point Reyes National Seashore, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and Redwood National Park. At risk are beaches, wetlands, other wildlife habitat, historic structures, highways and roads, campgrounds, picnic areas, and a visitor center.

• In Yosemite, mammals already are moving upslope to stay ahead of rising temperatures. About half of small mammal species in Yosemite now live at elevations different from where they were found nearly a century ago. Most have moved to higher elevations, by an average of about 500 yards. Along the coast, seals and shorebirds could lose habitat to a higher sea, and many may abandon the coastal national parks as suitable areas disappear.

And of course, for Montana's Glacier National Park, the report's authors cite projections that the last of the park's glaciers will be gone within 20 years, if not sooner.

This is, perhaps, a good place to pass along a favorite mantra of park rangers of late; that Glacier park wasn't actually named for its glaciers, but for the geologic history that formed the region's spectacular features. But it's logical that Glacier, tucked into the northwestern corner of Montana, has become the "poster child" of climate change in the national parks.

Scientists estimate that its 25 remaining glaciers could well be gone in a dozen years or so. Superintendent Chas Cartwright conceded that may be a small part of why Glacier is seeing record numbers of visitors -- more than two million this year, which is the park's centennial.

"Glacier isn't the only place we're seeing direct effects from climate change on the ground, right now," Jarvis said, standing on a gravel bar in McDonald Creek.

The parks chief cited apparent climate effects throughout the park system, including receding glaciers, withering water content in the mountain snow pack, and rain-on-snow events shifting from spring to fall.

"That completely changes the system," said Jarvis, who said they're also seeing wild land fires burning an average of 20 days longer into the season, encroachment of more exotic plants, and species moving up in elevation or vanishing from the landscape entirely. "We're not just gonna sit around and not do anything about it."

The question is what to do about it, which presents some unprecedented dilemmas for park managers and scientists, which, Jarvis says, are "causing us to rethink even the fundamental principles of national parks." Where as in years past, for example, new species moving into a park were looked upon as invaders to be dealt with inhospitably, now "they may be coming in because this is their last refuge."

Accommodating migrating species is one thing. But also on the table is direct, possibly radical intervention to save others. Jarvis recounts the time when a park scientist asked him, sardonically, "When do you put a sprinkler system on the giant sequoias?"

Jarvis asks rhetorically, "Where is the next habitat for the giant sequoia and are we as a society willing to move them, or plant them (somewhere else)? The biggest step in climate change is starting to ask those kinds of questions and to bring the very best minds to help us begin to wrestle with those as a society."

To this end, Jarvis is advancing a strategy with four key components:

• Expand the science and develop long-term data sets
  

• Embrace adaptation and multiple-scenario planning "at the landscape scale"
  

• Continue mitigation efforts, reducing the carbon footprint of the parks themselves
  

• Communication, leveraging the "extraordinary bully pulpit" that the parks provide, training scientists to speak to the layman, seizing opportunities to talk to the public about climate change.

Jack Potter, who directs science at Glacier, reinforced that this isn't just tomorrow's problem. He noted that spring "green-up" is occurring about three weeks ahead of the 40-year average at Glacier, which means that the landscape is drying out sooner in the season.

"No matter what scenario you look at, it's going to be drier," said Potter, pointing toward distant mountain snowfields. "That has all kinds of cascading effects downstream."

Potter said park managers are being forced to re-examine "the role of parks as reservoirs for biodiversity" and "how we view the type of appropriate management...in the face of the possible scenarios that are out there relating to climate."



Source:
KQED News, "National Parks Wrestle with Warming", accessed November 3, 2010
Greendiary, "25 National Parks Most Threatened by Climate Change", accessed November 4, 2010
Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, "RMCO - Statements and News Releases", accessed November 4, 2010