The World Nomad Games, held in Kyrgyzstan on September 3-8, drew participants from 40 countries, most of them from former Soviet Union. Competitions were held in over 20 different sports, including archery  and javelin throwing, horse racing and several kinds of wrestling (some between individuals who stand in a ring, another between mounted riders).  A sort of polo played with […]

This Week’s Roundup: Glaciers are being collected in Antarctica, “quietly transforming the Earth’s surface” and causing floods A team of scientists, aware of the need to obtain ice cores from threatened glaciers, are working to create a glacier archive bank in Antarctica From CNRS News:  “By capturing various components of the atmosphere, ice constitutes an invaluable […]

This Week’s Roundup: A monk’s drawings and photos from land and sea Drawings from the 1850s provide detail on Tibetan history and culture From British Library blogs: “The drawings in the British Library’s Wise Collection probably form the most comprehensive set of large-scale visual representations of mid-nineteenth century Tibet and the Western Himalayan kingdoms of Ladakh […]

I traveled recently to the Cordillera Blanca, the mountain range in Peru with the largest concentration of glaciers in the world’s tropics. The Peruvian National Institute for Research in Glaciers and Mountain Ecosystems, INAIGEM, invited me to participate in a forum, and helped me visit several rural communities. I’ve written other posts about the forum, […]

A major international forum this month in Peru has resulted in calls for strengthening research capabilities and for programs in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. It also had demonstrated the need for greater public participation and the development of new financial mechanisms to support these activities. It showed the importance of flexible governance […]

Zoila Mendoza, an anthropologist and the chair of the Department of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis, is also the producer of a documentary recorded in the high Andes of Peru. “The Pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Lord of Qoyllur Rit’i: The Walk Experience,” first released in February 2015, has won […]

Franco Banfi is a professional underwater photographer, renowned for his spectacular images of marine wildlife, captured across every ocean on the planet. In 2010, Banfi, a Swiss national, dived into the Lago di Sassolo (Lake Sassolo) to reveal the hidden wonders of the ice mazes which form in the glacial lake at 6,560 feet (2,000 m) above […]

Ninety percent of the western Antarctic Peninsula’s glaciers are retreating From Carbon Brief: “These rivers of ice ooze their way down through the Peninsula’s rocky mountain range and into the ocean, powered by gravity and their own weight. But of the 674 glaciers on the Peninsula’s western side, almost 90% are retreating. This happens when their […]

A new scientific study investigates the interactions between the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull’s lava flow and the overlaying ice cap, revealing previously unknown subglacial lava-ice interactions. Six years after  the eruption, the volcano is revisited by the author of the study, Björn Oddsson, a geophysicist with Iceland’s Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management. He and […]

The glaciers which feed the “Yangtze River Source Region” (YRSR) are in the “most sensitive area to global warming” atop the Tibetan Plateau, according to a study led by the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research. Nearly a quarter of the glacier coverage throughout the headwater region melted from 1970 through the late 2000s, as the […]

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frankenstein. For several days in June 1816, the young English writer Mary Godwin and her lover (and future husband), the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, were staying near a mansion, the Villa Diodati, in the village of Cologny on the shores of Lake Geneva, where the poet Lord Byron […]

A major conference highlighted significant evolution in research and international cooperation across the world’s so-called “Third Pole”. The Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (BPCRC) hosted the “Third Pole Environment Workshop”, which featured 80 researchers from 15 countries, specialised in researching Earth’s “Third Pole”. It was the sixth event since 2009. The Third Pole (TP) […]