“No hay glaciares donde se hace minería, según la UNSJ,” published in “Diario de Cuyo” (Province of San Juan) on 12/30/2010

“We have not seen any glacier affected by the mining activity, nor by any industrial activity, or that related with tourism or road works. We have seen that glaciers are nearby, but the mining activities do not reach them and do not affect them,” assured Silvio Peralta, Director of the Geology Institute of the School of Natural and Applied Sciences of the National University of San Juan yesterday.  His opinion is worth listening to as he is in charge of the institute that has just finished the study that determines how many glaciers there are in the Province of San Juan. According to that survey, the Andes in the Province of San Juan have 2,553 uncovered glaciers, which have surfaces equal to or larger than 1 hectare and are located over 5,000 meters of altitude.  The largerst number, 555, is in the Rio Blanco Sur basin, followed by the area of Castaño, with 460, and Agua Negra, with 381 ice masses. Thus, glaciers take a 0.39% of the total area of the Province of San Juan, i.e., 35,000 hectares out of the 8,935,100 that the province has. The final survey determined the existence of almost 800 ice masses more than the 1,780 that were anticipated last month, from a preliminary survey; and high definition satellite images, bought to European agencies, were used for its count, as well as field work. The survey is the step prior to the glacier inventory: This inventory involves the qualitative and hydrological study of each ice mass, for which it is essential to have coded each of the glaciers. Each code is associated to its water course,  “which will allow to measure in the future which will be the water input they will make each year, something that is fundamental to know when there will be a drought or not,” explained Peralta.