IRC: "Acid water on the rocks: a dangerous metal cocktail in the Peruvian Andes" with Raul Loayza Muro

Mountain glaciers are sentinels of climate change. The most vulnerable are located in rapidly warming tropical regions, such as the Cordillera Blanca in Peru, where they have undergone high rates of mass loss and retreat in the last decades. Attention to date has focused primarily on the quantity of water released from mountain glaciers; however, the concurrent changes in water quality are much more poorly constrained, despite their paramount importance for agriculture, food security, hydropower and ecosystem functioning. This talk tackles the importance of meltwater-rock interactions as a natural source of acid drainage and toxic metals potentially threatening human health, aquatic life and ecosystems in the Andes; how remote sensing can provide tools to determine key elements driving the vulnerability and future responses of catchments to glacier retreat and acidification; and understanding downstream buffers to develop effective solutions for creating resilience in an unprecedented climate change scenario. This research was supported by the CASCADA Project, led by Prof. Jemma Wadham (University of Bristol, UK) and Prof Raúl Loayza-Muro (Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Peru), and financed by the Newton-Paulet Fund.

Raúl Loayza-Muro is Professor at the Department of Biology and Physiology, and Principal Researcher of the Laboratory of Ecotoxicology at the Faculty of Sciences and Philosophy, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, in Lima, Peru. He investigates high altitude Andean aquatic ecosystems, studying the responses and adaptations of macroinvertebrate communities to environmental stress caused by UV radiation, acid drainage, and toxic metals; the use of bioindicators for the evaluation of freshwater ecosystems health, and the design of artificial wetlands for water and soil remediation. He has published articles on ecotoxicology, aquatic ecology, and bioremediation. Currently, he is the PI of the CASCADA and GLOBIOS Projects, whose main objective is to assess the vulnerability of water quality and biodiversity in high Andean basins to glacier retreat and climate change, and is the Director of the Water Competence Centre (CCA).