The relationship between mountains, climate, and water has been a core theme in Glacier Lab research for decades. Glaciers supply water for mountain regions worldwide, playing a particularly important role of regulating annual flows: they release meltwater in the dry season when there is less precipitation. Glaciers thus help reduce water variability for societies downstream.
Despite the ever-increasing study of glaciers and hydrology to help understand water supplies, there remains a shortage of research on water use, the politics and inequality of water distribution, and the way water availability and water allocation intersect. The excellent work on the science of glacier runoff, peak water, and outburst flood risk have not corresponded with a correspondingly robust analysis of social hydrology. Mountains are not remote wilderness areas—they are home to diverse communities of people that currently face some of the world’s most rapid climatic changes.
In response, Carey has worked with interdisciplinary teams in the United States, Peru, and Switzerland to re-envision glaciers-ice-society dynamics. They have offered the concept of “hydro-social modeling”, which aims to integrate human variables into the water modeling process. This integrated, interdisciplinary approach helps shift the way researchers conceptualize mountains, climate, and water. It fits into the larger framing of socio-cryospheric systems that Carey and members of the Glacier Lab have offered.
A few examples of Glacier Lab research on mountains, climate, and water include:
Mark Carey, Graham McDowell, Christian Huggel, Becca Marshall, Holly Moulton, César Portocarrero, Zachary Provant, John M. Reynolds, Luis Vicuña, “A Socio-Cryospheric Systems Approach to Glacier Hazards, Glacier Runoff Variability, and Climate Change,” Snow and Ice-Related Hazards, Risks, and Disasters, 2nd edition, edited by Wilfried Haeberli and Colin Whiteman (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2021), 215-257.
Alexandre Guittard, Michel Baraer, Jeffrey M. McKenzie, Bryan G. Mark, Alejo C. Rapre, Jeffrey Bury, Mark Carey, Kenneth R. Young, “Trace Metal Stream Contamination in a Post Peak Water Context: Lessons from the Cordillera Blanca, Peru,” ACS Earth and Space Chemistry 4, no. 4 (2020): 506-514.
Mark Carey, Olivia C. Molden, Mattias Borg Rasmussen, M. Jackson, Anne W. Nolin, and Bryan G. Mark, “Impacts of Glacier Recession and Declining Meltwater on Mountain Societies,” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 107, no. 2 (2017): 350-359.
Mark Carey, Michel Baraer, Bryan G. Mark, Adam French, Jeffrey Bury, Kenneth R. Young, and Jeffrey M. McKenzie, “Toward Hydro-Social Modeling: Merging Human Variables and the Social Sciences with Climate-Glacier Runoff Models (Santa River, Peru),” Journal of Hydrology 518, Part A (2014): 60-70.