The response of high Andean wetlands to changes in mountain hydrology

Abstract ID: 3.11340 | Accepted as Poster | Poster | TBA | TBA

Rike Becker (0)
Davies, Bethan (1), Montoya, Nilton (2), Ross, Anthony (4), Ely, Jeremy (3), Buytaert, Wouter (4)
Rike Becker ((0) Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, SW7 2AZ, London, London, GB)
Davies, Bethan (1), Montoya, Nilton (2), Ross, Anthony (4), Ely, Jeremy (3), Buytaert, Wouter (4)

(0) Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, SW7 2AZ, London, London, GB
(1) School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
(2) Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco, Cusco, Peru
(3) School of Geography and Planning, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
(4) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK

(1) School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
(2) Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco, Cusco, Peru
(3) School of Geography and Planning, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
(4) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK

Categories: Cryo- & Hydrosphere, Remote Sensing, Water Cycle, Water Resources
Keywords: High mountain wetlands, climate change, water balance

Categories: Cryo- & Hydrosphere, Remote Sensing, Water Cycle, Water Resources
Keywords: High mountain wetlands, climate change, water balance

High mountain wetlands (bofedales) are vital to the local environment of the Andes, acting as key water and carbon reservoirs, biodiversity hotspots, and cultural landmarks for indigenous and local communities. Knowledge on their spatial and temporal dynamics can help us to better understand hydrological processes in high-mountain regions, where crucial water balance parameters such as water retention and baseflow contributions to runoff are highly complex and often poorly constrained.
Here we show the results from a remote sensing based, high resolution wetland mapping approach combined with in situ measurements from a network of wetland water level sensors in selected study catchments, that reveals the seasonal dynamics of high Andean wetlands, from 2019 until today. We focus on understanding the influence of glacier melt upon seasonal storage within wetlands, by quantifying their spatial-temporal behaviour in relation to their distance from glaciers. We note that this is likely to change in the near-future, given the severity of climate change impacts on glacier recession and catchment hydrology, which makes a timely assessment of these dynamics even more important. Additionally, we assess wetland dynamics across different Andean latitudes, to explore how hydrological and climatic factors shape the spatial-temporal behaviour of wetlands.
We show that the information on wetland variability derived from our high-resolution wetland map can help to better understand the complex hydrological dynamics in mountain regions. Particularly the seasonal variation in wetland extents shows clear differences in dry vs. wet periods, which reveals changing compositions of hydrological fluxes (i.e. changing dominance of groundwater, glacier and snow melt, or precipitation). Our dynamic high mountain wetland map can thus help to improve our understanding of water retention and baseflow contributions, and how they may change under future climate conditions.

N/A
NAME:
TBA
BUILDING:
TBA
FLOOR:
TBA
TYPE:
TBA
CAPACITY:
TBA
ACCESS:
TBA
ADDITIONAL:
TBA
FIND ME:
>> Google Maps

Limits: min. 3 words, max. 30 words or 200 characters

Choose the session you want to submit an abstract. Please be assured that similar sessions will either be scheduled consecutively or merged once the abstract submission phase is completed.

Select your preferred presentation mode
Please visit the session format page to get a detailed view on the presentation timings
The final decision on oral/poster is made by the (Co-)Conveners and will be communicated via your My#IMC dashboard

Please add here your abstract meeting the following requirements:
NO REFERNCES/KEYWORDS/ACKNOWEDGEMENTS IN AN ABSTRACT!
Limits: min 100 words, max 350 words or 2500 characters incl. tabs
Criteria: use only UTF-8 HTML character set, no equations/special characters/coding
Copy/Paste from an external editor is possible but check/reformat your text before submitting (e.g. bullet points, returns, aso)

Add here affiliations (max. 30) for you and your co-author(s). Use the row number to assign the affiliation to you and your co-author(s).
When you hover over the row number you are able to change the order of the affiliation list.

1
2
3
4
1

Add here co-author(s) (max. 30) to your abstract. Please assign the affiliation(s) of each co-author in the "Assigned Aff. No" by using the corresponding numbers from the "Affiliation List" (e.g.: 1,2,...)
When you hover over the row number you are able to change the order of the co-author list.

1
2
3
4
5
1
1
2
3
1
Close