Glacier Preserved During Summer Months Using Tarps, Diego Bacchus '23, December 2021 Issue

A team of Italian conservationists place the tarps. Source: the local.it.

For well over a century, glaciers have been melting as a result of global warming. However, due to the growing ramifications of human-caused climate change, many glaciers have been melting at increasingly alarming rates over the past few decades. This reality certainly does not escape the Presena glacier in the Northern Italian province of Trento, which has lost more than a third of its volume in the years since 1993. For this reason, conservationists have been making large-scale efforts every summer since 2008 to preserve as much of the Presena glacier’s snow and ice as possible.

The annual endeavor involves installing multiple strips of specialized tarp across the glacier’s surface. These tarps consist of geotextile tarpaulins that simultaneously reflect sunlight and block heat from reaching the snow beneath, thereby maintaining a low temperature that preserves as much snow and ice as possible. Additionally, to add to the tarps’ effectiveness, the team sews each strip to those adjacent to it, preventing any sunlight or heat from slipping in between and melting the snow. This degree of care and vigilance is warranted as the glacier is constantly getting smaller, since it is imperative to ensure that the tarps are as effective as can be to counter the downward trend.

A close-up of the geotextile tarpulins. Source: the local.it.

As for installation, each tarp measures 5 meters by 70 meters (approximately 16 feet by 229 feet) and, together, they must cover a total of 29 acres (1.263 x 106 ft2) of ice and snow. Overall, the process of individually laying each strip of tarp, pulling each one taut, sewing them together, and anchoring them down with sandbags takes a total of six weeks, a process that will be reversed at the end of summer to prepare for the skiing season. In the years since the tarps were first used, 70 percent of the Presena glacier’s snow has been saved from the heat of the summer sun every year as a result of the tarps.