AT3-7: Rock glaciers: water relevance and challenges for their monitoring.

Conveners: Cedomir Marangunic, Geoestudios. Felipe Ugalde, Geoestudios. Ashley Apey, Geoestudios. cmarangunic@geoestudios.cl

Description: The debate about the origin and characteristics of rock glaciers is extensive and persistent in the literature, and Chile is no exception. With almost 3,600 rock glaciers in its territory, equivalent to an area of 480 km2, one of its features that requires greater consensus is the water relevance of these bodies. In a context of uninterrupted mega-drought, it is increasingly important to know and understand the genesis of these cryoforms together with the ice content and volume of water they represent. In turn, it remains to understand in better detail the mechanisms with which they contribute water to their respective basins. Today there are various remote methodologies that allow recognizing rock glaciers, their geomorphology and kinematics, however, the models that estimate their water supply lack alternatives that adequately represent their properties.

This session seeks to generate a space for discussion where contributions are presented about the monitoring, analysis, and modeling of rock glaciers in Chile and in the world, in order to get ideas and criteria that contribute to the knowledge of the water resources contained in these glaciers.