Geologists Are Hunting for Camouflaged ‘Rock Glaciers’ Vital to Global Freshwater Supplies

The average person’s idea of how climate change might someday plunge the world into a series of post-apocalyptic, fresh-water resource wars probably focuses on the simple equation that rising temperatures equal more drought. But the reality is a bit more unusual, according to a recent report by the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization.

Think of the world’s mountain glaciers, like those now melting in the Himalayas , as their own kind of freshwater savings account, keeping potable water on literal ice for judicious, naturally timed releases into nearby rivers and underground aquifers. Now, geologists with the Utah Geological Survey, the University of Utah, and other institutions are busy working to locate and catalogue their state’s hidden reserves of ice, frozen into so-called “rock glacier” formations often concealed from aerial surveys. The hope, as the state surveyor’s Brigham Young University collaborators described it, is to better “inform future water management.”