<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/india-ice-stupas-artificial-glaciers-irrigation/>
"Autumn colors burnish the willows and poplars in Ladakh, a remote valley
sandwiched between the Greater Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in
Northern India. Farmers prepare for the harvest of wheat, potatoes and barley
in fields flanked by snowy peaks and glaciers. In the summer and autumn, these
melt and provide much-needed water for drinking and irrigation downstream.
But in the spring, when Ladakhi farmers sow their summer crops, many face an
acute water shortage: the glaciers high above them are still frozen, and the
region is a high-altitude desert that receives only about 11 centimeters of
precipitation annually.
Up until a few years ago, this water scarcity — at dizzying altitudes between
3,000 and 6,120 meters, and with temperature extremes swinging all the way from
-28 to 33 degrees Celsius — compelled many farmers to give up farming
altogether.
“We used to face such acute water shortages in March and April in our village
that we had to migrate to a neighboring village with better water supply,” says
Kunzang Namgyal, resident of Kulum, a tiny village 50 km north of Leh (the
capital of Ladakh). The settlement of 11 families, all dependent on agriculture
and livestock rearing, used to be an oasis of green surrounded by craggy, arid
mountains. But since 2010, water scarcity has turned it into a ghost village.
“We wanted to keep our connection with the land of our ancestors alive,” he
says. “But how?”
In 2013, Ladakhi educator and inventor Sonam Wangchuk came up with a surprising
way to relieve this seasonal problem. He had noticed that ice stalagmites
remained solid long after horizontal ice around them had melted. Was it
possible that when frozen vertically, ice took longer to melt than when it lay
flat on the ground? And could this be a viable way to store water to tide
farmers over the spring drought?
Wangchuk began experimenting with building ice into pyramids in winter to see
how long they took to melt. Because they looked similar to the conical Buddhist
stupas — shrines that contain relics of holy men and women, or even sacred
mantras, ubiquitous across the Ladakhi landscape — they came to be called ice
stupas. Their recognizable shape would, Wangchuk surmised, blend seamlessly
with their surroundings and make people identify with them more easily."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
