This week’s edition of Canmore’s Rocky Mountain Outlook carried a detailed report on Why Cold Matters: The State and Fate of Canada’s Ice and Snow, an evening of presentations co-hosted by the Centre for Hydrology and the Interpretive Guides’ Association on Thursday, March 1.
Presenters included Prof John Pomeroy (Director of the Centre for Hydrology), Bob Sandford (CH associate and chair of the Canadian arm of the UN’s Water for Life Decade), and glaciologist Dr Shawn Marshall (University of Calgary): all three are key members of the Western Watersheds Research Collaborative.
Their talks provided illustrations of entire ecosystems which have evolved in alpine and glacial habitats, and of the immense importance of snow and ice as store-houses of water for human use. With changes to global climate likely to lead to temperature increases of as much as 4° C in the next few decades, their continued existence is looking increasingly precarious.
The article is available on the Outlook’s web-site.