CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The study presented here describes two major tasks. First, a preliminary glacier inventory of the Wet Andes between the 42° S, 72°10 W and 42° 10 S, 72° W, was realized. The study area is characterized by a small ice field, from which valley glaciers or hanging glaciers flow out. Similar ice fields exist further west. The inventory was compiled using one ASTER scene of 2007, following GLIMS methodology. Because of the presence of covered or highly cast shadow parts and proglacial lakes, a manual correction of glaciers boundaries was necessary. The total area covered with glaciers or/and snow patches is ~100 km2, 103 glaciers bigger than 0.1 km2 were identified and 50% of them has an area of <0.5 km2. The biggest glacier is in Argentina the Esperanza Norte glacier with 10.7 Km2. Second, 3-dimensional glacier parameters obtained from a digital elevation model (ASTER_GDEM) in GIS environment were related with the horizontal area change between 1987 and 2007 in order to characterize the influence of topography in the response of glaciers to climate. The extents of the glaciers in 1987 were obtained from a Landsat TM. As preliminary results, glaciers that lost more area between 1987 and 2007 are characterized by an ablation zone of low gradient and low elevation, most of them developed proglacial lakes in the 20 year period. Another significant change is related with valley glaciers that now are reconstituted. This dynamic behavior has to be considered when evaluating the response of glaciers to climate.