Team Members:
Person Name | Person role on project | Affiliation |
---|---|---|
Daniel Slayback | Principal Investigator | SSAI, Greenbelt, US |
Compton Tucker | Co-Investigator | NASA, Greenbelt, United States |
Karen Mohr | Co-Investigator | NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, US |
Karina Yager | Co-Investigator | NASA/GSFC, Bowie, US |
Bryan Mark | Collaborator | The Ohio State University, Columus, United States |
The tropical glaciers of Peru and Bolivia are the keystone element of regional pastoral agricultural systems that support large Andean populations. The glacier meltwaters sustain associated alpine peatbogs, and these in turn provide critical year-round islands of nutritious forage for an extensive highland system of pastoral agricultural that has endured for several millennia. However, as rapid climate change continues and tropical Andean glaciers recede, the consequences for peatbogs, and the pastoral agriculture they support, are not well understood. Our proposed research will identify the impacts by first quantifying recent glacier and peatbog landcover change, and then analyzing these changes in concert with data on climate, hydrology, and pastoral production to determine drivers of landscape change and impacts on land use.