Pace Of Melting For Andean Glaciers Moving Faster

[hatrack]

Nearby, in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, Jose Ignacio Lambarri, who owns a 60-acre farm, is also feeling the heat. He grows giant white corn, with kernels that used to be as big as a quarter. This corn, which is exported to Spain and Japan, grows in this valley because of a unique combination of water, temperature, soil and sun. But four years ago, Lambarri told me, he started to notice something: "The water level is going down, and the temperature is going up." As a result, the giant corn kernels are not growing quite as large as they used to, new pests have started appearing, and there is no longer enough water to plant the terraces in the valley that date from Incan times.

He also noticed that the snow line he had grown up looking at for 44 years was starting to recede, which was making relations with his fellow farmers more difficult. Every year they decide by committee how to divide up the water. Now, "every year the meetings get more heated, because there is less water to distribute and the same amount of land that needs it," he said. "I tell my wife the day that mountain loses its snow, we will have to move out of the valley."

For many Americans, combating climate change is at best a cause for green do-gooders and at worse something to be debated. But in a developing country like Peru, where many people live on the land and close to the edge, climate change is neither a hobby nor a question for debate. Peru's water reserves are the glaciers and snowpacked areas of the Andes. Since they have started to shrink, without replenishment, "we don't know what the future holds -- whether we're talking about the water we need for agriculture or for drinking or for our hydropower," Ferreyros said.

Peru's plant and animal species are also being affected. The Andes region is one of the world's most mega-diverse hot spots, home to unique plant and animal species. Its rain forests, mountains and varied terrain create microclimates that provide habitats for endemic species, which have evolved in isolation from one another. As climate change shifts the boundaries between these zones, species found nowhere else in the world are threatened and disappearing.

EDIT

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060625/NEWS/606250805/1006/SPORTS