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Glacial Lakes of Sierra Nevada as a Crystal Ball

Villar-Argaiz M, JM Medina-Sánchez, E Corral Arredondo, P Carrillo , BA Biddanda - 2018


Las lagunas de aguas claras de Sierra Nevada "capturan" señales de cambios en la precipitación, radiación ultravioleta, deposición de aerosoles y calentamiento, por lo que sirven como "bola de cristal" en las que predecir los cambios futuros que tendrán lugar a altitudes más bajas.

Glacial Lakes of Sierra Nevada as a Crystal Ball

Dear Everyone:
The Sierra Nevada mountains of Spain are renowned for their endemic biota. Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) are studying high-mountain oasis lakes of glacial origin as sentinels of climate change due to their increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation at elevations of 3000 m.a.s.l. One of these oligotrophic 74 lakes, La Caldera, is pictured here during the summer of dry and wet years. With ongoing climate change, these clear-waters lakes capture signals of changes in precipitation, ultraviolet radiation, aeolian dust deposition and warming, and serve as “crystal ball” for forecasting what is to come in lower altitudes in the future. Whereas long term data for these lakes are available since the seventies, the dataset is sparse in its coverage of space and time. With support from UGR’s Departamento de Ecología and Instituto del Agua, Federación Andaluza de Montañismo, Junta de Andalucía, Observatorio Cambio Global Sierra Nevada and the Sierra Nevada Parque Nacional, we have begun a citizen science project to gain better information on these rapidly changing ecosystems. Local residents and adventurous visitors can post photographs of these lakes at www.lagunasdesierranevada.es

Manuel Villar-Argaiz, Juan Manuel Medina-Sánchez, Eulogio Corral Arredondo, Presentación Carrillo
Departamento de Ecología and Instituto del Agua, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain.
(http://ecologia.ugr.es/ and http://www.ugr.es/~iagua/),

and Bopaiah Biddanda
Annis Water Resources Institute, Grand Valley State University, Muskegon, Michigan, USA.
(http://www.gvsu.edu/wri/)