News Using Geographic Information Science to map the intersection of mining, glaciers, and communities
A J-WAFS seed grant project touches on this year’s World Water Day theme of “Save Our Glaciers.”
Emily Stangel March 19, 2025
J-WAFS researcher Scott Odell (L) and PhD candidate and research assistant Caroline White-Nockleby (R).
Each year, UN-Water, the United Nations’ inter-agency coordination mechanism on water and sanitation, sets a theme for World Water Day, an international day for bringing awareness to water-related issues. 2025’s World Water Day theme is “Save Our Glaciers.” Glaciers are imperative to the stability of many different ecosystems and environments, especially in populated regions. Meltwater from glaciers, for example, provides water for drinking and agriculture, among other things. However, climate change is causing glaciers to melt at a faster pace, causing floods, landslides, and sea level rise that can devastate communities.
One J-WAFS seed grant project is examining how converging impacts of climate change and mining are affecting Andean glaciers and the agricultural communities dependent upon them.
Caroline White-Nockleby is a PhD candidate in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society and a research assistant with the Environmental Solutions Initiative’s Mining, Environment, and Society program. She is currently working with J-WAFS researchers Scott Odell and Professor John Fernández to observe the impacts of climate change and mining on glaciers and agricultural communities in Chile. White-Nockleby is leading the research specifically on glaciers. She is using Geographic Information Science (GIS), which uses geographic data, to examine this topic. The aim is to produce findings that can be used by communities, government, and industry to respond to or reduce the negative impacts of mining and climate change on glaciers and people in water-stressed regions of Chile and around the world.
As part of this work, White-Nockleby and Odell published a recent article in Energy Research & Social Science that highlights the connections between climate change-induced melting of the cryosphere and the heightened need for mined minerals from glaciated regions. The article offers a systemic analysis of the peer-reviewed literature on the links between mining and glaciers. From the late 1800s to the 1980s, most research regarded glaciers as obstacles to mining. Consequently, industries mined through glaciers, inadvertently creating a historical record of how mining activities impacted the cryosphere throughout the 20th century. In the 1990s, researchers started using glaciers as archives to study historical mining and climate change. However, it wasn’t until the 21st century that scientists began to address the harm mining infrastructure, excavation, and dust caused to glaciers, freshwater supply, and agricultural communities. Thus, in the 2000s, there was an emergence of glacier protection campaigns, which has fueled this research.
“With this research, we wanted to give scholars and policymakers alike some tools to better understand the scope of the threat that mining poses to glaciers, as well as how the mining-glacier relationship has evolved through time,” says White-Nockleby.
Despite 21st century efforts to preserve glacial integrity, there has been a heightened desire to mine for certain metals necessary for the clean energy transition movement in glaciated regions. This paradox poses a unique contradiction in environmental policies. White-Nockleby says, “The clean energy transition is vital to mitigating climate change, but it also generates new demand for a range of critical minerals. This demand is, in turn, increasing incentives to mine in sensitive areas, including in the cryosphere.”
White-Nockleby’s work aligns perfectly with the UN’s goal for World Water Day 2025. She ultimately hopes that this research can help guide smarter policies to furnish the metals needed for the energy transition - policies that help not only grow clean energy generation but also protect glaciers and the communities and ecosystems that rely on them.
See below for more information on this work.