Seracas have become popular water management tools in the Himalayas. But can they work in Chile?
A member of Chile’s Nilus Project stands in front of an ice stupa during a field trip to India’s Ladakh region. (Rosa Oyarzún, courtesy of Kristina Lyons)
Every winter in the Himalayas for decades, man-made reservoirs have captured glacial meltwater from streams and preserved it as ice. By slowing down the meltwater or spraying it into the air, people refreeze it, often forming shapes called stupas, which may resemble domed Buddhist shrines. The ice can then melt the following year, allowing irrigation to support a longer agricultural season in the high mountains.
Now, a group of Chilean engineers is trying to transfer this technology to their country’s alpine glaciers, which they call ” Nile Project. In 2021, engineers developed their first prototype in a private park in the Cajón de Maipo area, south of the country’s capital, Santiago. The area was chosen for its accessibility and proximity to the Maipo River. The Maipo River is a glacial river that originates in the Andes and provides fresh water to Santiago and the surrounding area. During the 2021 southern hemisphere winter, their prototype collected 550,000 kilograms of ice and melted it in less than two months. Although smaller than the reservoirs in the Himalayas, it provided an early proof of concept.
Those efforts caught the attention of Penn researcher Christina Lyons, who read about the project while conducting anthropological research on indigenous Mapuche communities and their relationship to the glaciers surrounding San Diego.
“I was very fascinated by the idea,” she told GlacierHub, recalling that what struck her most was the unique South-South knowledge transfer between the Himalayas and Chile. “I was very interested in the technology, what it could do and how it was built.” Lyons began working with the engineers and published a paper analyzing the unique sociopolitical context of the Niles project earlier this year.
Project Nilus’ prototype ice tower captured 550,000 kilograms of solid ice during the 2021 winter. (Nilus Project, courtesy of Kristina Lyons)
Satellite photography dates construction of Himalayan ice bank to at least in the 1960s. Sometimes called “artificial glaciers”—a catchy but scientifically inaccurate term because they don’t accumulate ice for long periods of time or move across land—these reservoirs do this by taking advantage of the frequent Freeze-thaw cycles to reduce the loss of glacier meltwater. environment. Unlike lakes, which freeze from the top down, ice banks freeze from the bottom up. By designing the meltwater to flow slowly from the hills—whether by creating a series of loose steps, redirecting the water to shady areas with larger surface areas, or by sending it into pipes that spray into the surrounding air—the ice The reservoir allows the water to freeze back into ice before flowing further. Over time, layers of ice stacked on top of each other, creating a water storage system.
In recent years, individual community leaders and NGOs have gained important attention Beyond the Himalayan community and around the world. That’s why these projects caught the attention of Chileans in the first place.this recent expansion The ice bank project in the Himalayas is a powerful example of community-led, locally designed water management solutions.
“Their priority is really to empower the community to solve their own problems and create an education system to train people in the area [do so],” Lyons said.
Markus Nusser, a professor at Heidelberg University, studies the history, evolution and efficacy of this practice in Himalayan communities. “These types of ice banks have had quite a history in places like [the Indian region of] Ladakh,” he said in an interview with GlacierHub.
Nusser points out that the special ice banks — ice stupas — that Chilean engineers modeled on their project are relatively new iterations of an old practice. Ice towers create and store ice by spraying small water droplets. The project, designed and promoted by Ladakh engineer Sonam Wangchuk around 2015, sparked a surge of interest and funding. “They had a competition between the different villages – which village built the tallest,” recalls Nusser.
Students of the Himalayan Alternative Academy in Ladakh pose in front of their project as part of the ‘Ice Stupa Competition’ held in 2018-2019. (Himalayan Alternative Institute, Ladakh, via Wikimedia Commons
A major hurdle in ensuring the success of the ice stupa, however, depends on having enough maintenance staff. In Ladakh, many early projects were scaled up by NGOs receiving international funding. Once a project is launched and funding dries up, it is often difficult for the community to keep the ice towers running, Nusser noted. This is partly due to the region’s shrinking agricultural workforce, which has long been in decline. Characterized through massive population migration.
“These structures [need] A lot of maintenance,” Nuesser said. “I’ve seen a lot of cases when the money ran out and they just let [them] go down. … When the hype is over, the structure will face some problems. Nusser said that when he visited Ladakh last winter, he saw many buildings that were once impressive but are now impoverished.
The need for an adequate workforce also poses a major challenge for Chile, as few people live in the mountains where meltwater from glaciers can be harvested. If you don’t look out for burst pipes, slow flow rates, or other issues, projects can be compromised. Nilus engineers, however, are testing remote sensing and artificial intelligence techniques to control how and where ice forms on top of the structure.
The situation in Chile adds another unique hurdle: Privatized water rights structure This determines how downstream water is used. Water privatization was first signed into law by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1980, creating a formal market in the country for buying, selling and leasing water rights.Last year, the Chilean reject A new constitution would largely unfinished the regulation.
The law draws a fine line between privatizing glaciers and privatizing glacier water. “You can’t privatize the water in a glacier, just like you can’t just put a hose in there and say, ‘What comes out is mine,'” Lyons explained. “But as the water melts , as it melts every season now due to climate change, it belongs to someone. That’s one of the complexities: Where does the water go? Who is it for?”
Nusser agrees. “It’s a whole different set of problems,” he said, noting Chilean mining industry This adds another layer of problems, as mining operations often require large amounts of water, and there may be interest in supplying water from new seracs. Still, Nusselt is cautiously optimistic. “If they make people aware of the ownership of this thing, it will work,” he said.
For Lyon, the issue of water rights in Chile highlights the limitations of private companies in addressing regional water scarcity. “I know their intentions are entirely good,” she said. She noted that internal migration from other parts of Chile to the Santiago region has exacerbated ongoing water stress. “But economically, they themselves are still stuck in a certain pattern. If they need to create businesses and need to pay employees, what can they do? How much flexibility do you have in such a privatized system to make projects really become [a climate solution]? “
Nusser also noted that even if the project were successful in retaining glacier meltwater until the agricultural season, it would not mitigate the loss of the entire glacier.
“them [ice reservoirs] is a very successful concept for bridging the critical gap of water scarcity. But on the flip side, there’s no extra water coming into the system,” he said. “It helps with water demand this year and next year. But in the long run, it won’t help, because the main water source will be reduced. “
Lyons agrees. “I think for the Chileans, they wish they could do something to address the retreat of glaciers,” she said. “What I see is that at a time of growing awareness about climate change and global warming, it seems like it would be helpful if ice stupas could do something like this. It’s still very speculative.”
Chile’s efforts to scale up a pilot project near Santiago will show whether this much-lauded South-South technology transfer paradigm works.
Through a series of pipes, Project Niles’ prototype ice tower grows new ice by spraying glacier meltwater from the top and forming ice from the bottom up. (The Nerus Project, courtesy of Christina Lyons)
glacier center is a climate communication initiative led by Ben Orloff, an anthropologist at the Columbia Climate Institute. Many of GlacierHub’s authors are students or alumni of the Climate School.
