Research Activities at UNO

GLIMS research and education activities by UNO have been many and varied, as befits the extensive international interest in the highest mountains of the world, as well as because of the highly contentious political and military situations that prevail in the region.  Because of the high international visibility of GLIMS as the global climate warms and glaciers world-wide are so dramatically affected, the personnel of the GLIMS Project at UNO have been able to be in the forefront of a number of important scientific activities in High South Asia.  These include:

• GLIMS in the Nanga Parbat Project funded by the US National Science Foundation and National Geographic Society wherein highly energetic surficial processes of slope failures, glaciers, catastrophic outburst floods and rivers were discovered to be unloading Earth’s crust so that it rose in a ‘tectonic aneurysm’ as a major peak >8 km high.
• GLIMS in the K2 Project funded by the US National Science Foundation and National Geographic Society wherein landslides and glaciers of the Karakoram Himalaya are being investigated from the point of view of integrated geomorphic systems.
• GLIMS is tracking changes to glaciers and snow-melt vital to water supplies for many millions of people in drought-torn South Asia.
• GLIMS UNOmaha has been requested by the Government of Pakistan to continue to help them in snow and ice monitoring and cryoscience education through the US National Academy of Science and the US Department of State.
• GLIMS UNOmaha has been funded by the US National Science Foundation and the Lounsbery Foundation for a ‘science-for-peace’ workshop between India and Pakistan in the Kashmir Crisis and the Siachen Glacier War.
• GLIMS UNOmaha has been asked by the Government of China to participate in their project on Monsoon Asia Integrated Research Studies (MAIRS), slated to monitor problematic changes to ice and permafrost in the Himalaya and Tibet.
• GLIMS UNOmaha has been selected by a Danish engineering company (DHI Group) and the Government of India to help them predict water discharge in the Sutlej River in the Central Himalaya derived from snow and glacier melt, as well as other precipitation on the Tibetan Plateau and Himalaya.