10,000 Square Meters Of White Covering Is Preventing The Ice From Melting

Summer is coming in northern Italy at a fast pace with the first sunbeams are hitting the glacier. Since 1993, the Presena glacier in this region has lost over a third of its volume.

However, volunteers are doing what they can to protect it from the effect of global warming. When the ski season ends and cable cars get berthed, conservationists are laying white tarps to block the sun’s rays in attempts to stop it from melting.

Davide Panizza, 34 years old, head of the Carosello-Tonale firm doing the work, explains that the area is shrinking continuously, so they try to cover as much as they can. When the project began in 2008, the team covered 30,000 square meters. Now, the team covers 100,000 square meters with white tarps.

According to Panizza, the wraps they use are geotextile tarpaulins that can reflect sunlight, keeping the surface underneath at a temperature lower than the external environment. This helps preserve as much snow as it can.

On the border between the Trentino Alto Adige and Lombardy regions, at an altitude of 2700-3000 meters, workers are unrolling the sheets in long strips. They move down the mountain, pulling the tarps, sew them together to make sure the heat won’t get underneath the coverings. They also place sandbags on the surface to prevent the wind from blowing the tarps away.

Each sheet measures 70x5 meters, in the white color, making it barely distinguishable from the white snow. Panizza said:

“There are glacier cover systems similar to ours on a few Austrian glaciers, but the surface covered by the tarpaulins is much smaller.” 

Though the work scale seems small compared with the size of Earth, it is effective. Franco Del Pero, leader of the similar operation in Austria said:

“When we remove them in September and we see that they did their job, we feel proud.”

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