Climate change has dramatically altered the Swiss Alp landscape — at a quicker pace than expected — as melting glaciers have created more than 1,000 new lakes across in the mountains, a study published Monday showed. The inventory of Swiss Glacial lakes showed that almost 1,200 new lakes have formed in formerly glaciated regions of the Swiss Alps since the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850.
Around 1,000 of them still exist today, according to the study published by the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag). That is far more than the few hundreds the researchers had expected to find at the beginning of the project. Daniel Odermatt, Head of the Remote Sensing Group at the aquatic research institute Eawag said that the researchers expected a few hundred glacial lakes but found over a thousand. He said that 180 have been added in the last decade alone. Glaciers in the Swiss Alps are in steady decline, losing a full two percent of their volume last year alone. The researchers further said that the ice began to melt at the end of the Little Ice Age, and subsequently, it grabbed the interest of environmentalists. The researcher said it was the first time when high-quality aerial photo data from Swisstopo was captured.
After a brief decline, the lake formation rate surged between 2006 and 2016, with 18 new lakes appearing each year on average, while the water surface swelled by over 400 square metres (4,300 square feet) annually.
