Using drones to study high-altitude glaciers.

PositionUnmanned Aerial Vehicles

While some dream of the day that aerial drones deliver their online purchases, scientists are using the technology today to deliver data that never was available before. About 5,000 meters high in the Peruvian Andes, the scientists are mapping glaciers and wetlands in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range with 10-centimeter precision to gauge how climate change will affect the 500,000 local residents who rely in part on those glaciers for their water supply.

Their strategy provides a template for research teams that are investigating water security in other areas of the world with much larger populations, including China and India. Though the study is just beginning, one early finding is that the Cordillera Blanca has a healthy groundwater system, says Oliver Wigmore, a doctoral student in geography at Ohio State University, Columbus. "In this area, glacier melt provides up to 50% of the water during the dry season, and people use it for farms, hydroelectricity, and to drink. We know the glaciers are disappearing, so there will be less water available for the dry season in the future, but what my colleagues and I have found is that the groundwater system is storing some of the glacier melt as well as precipitation. There will still be a significant drop in water supply eventually, but there may be some potential for the groundwater to buffer it."

The good news about the groundwater system would have been very hard to obtain without special high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that Wigmore designed and built, and time-lapse thermal camera systems that colleague Jeffrey McKenzie--associate professor of earth...

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