Shallap gorge

SHALLAP gorge // Carhuascancha summit - 5848 m Alt.
PERU, Ancash region.

In high Andean ecosystems, the rapid melting of glaciers not only endangers the water supply for local populations, but also affects its quality.

Climate change is the main global environmental problem facing humanity. Like an irascible machine that has lost all logic, it produces extreme situations. Floods and droughts. Heat and cold waves. Glacial retreat. Rising sea levels. Limit situations that affect in multiple ways, to a greater or lesser extent, all regions of the planet; and from which indirect consequences arise, collateral damage that begins to emerge remotely in the most vulnerable contexts, as is the case of acid rock drainage or ARD. This phenomenon responds to the accelerated rate of deglaciation faced by snow-capped mountains, leading to the formation of extremely acidic waters, which today is one of the most worrying environmental problems in glacial regions.


Audio comments: Dr. Raúl Loayza-Muro, director of the ecotoxicology laboratory of Cayetano Heredia University.