We started Alpine of the Americas Project (AAP) to connect mountains, people, and water. Alpine environments provide drinking water, electricity, and support agricultural lands for millions of people downstream. We record local watershed and mountain habitat changes so communities can better plan for increased demand for limited resources.
AAP implements simple, repeatable and useful observations that travelers can repeat in order to contribute to research on alpine changes. We have recorded 62 useful historic repeat photos in the Sierra Nevada and in Patagonia. These photographs are useful in assessing the glacier and snowfield retreat, forest densification, tree line fluctuations, meadow infill, and insect damage. We provide these high resolution data to climate scientists and share these images with the public.
Our simple methods and established photo locations throughout North and South America enable us to turn our efforts toward sharing these experiences with others. Our participants can send us alpine historic photos from any American alpine region, which we will share with mountain enthusiasts who can repeat these photos. In this way, Alpine of the Americas will better fulfill our purpose to help climate scientists and communities understand the changes occurring in their mountains and watersheds.
Follow our adventures here at our blog, on Facebook and with your feet by experiencing these beautiful and rugged alpine regions of our planet.
