WATER CYCLING IN HIGH-ALTITUDE WETLANDS - IMPLICATIONS FOR WATER SECURITY IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES

项目概述（请不超过4000个字符，包括空格）：项目重点：开发和验证对高海拔山地湿地（bofedales）水文过程的理解，这将改变对秘鲁高度依赖和脆弱的最终用户的山区供水的理解。与最终用户（CONDESAN）共同开发，以最大限度地提高该项目对秘鲁区域水资源规划的影响。这是一个多学科项目，与nerc最需要的技能密切相关，包括：淡水科学、实地考察、实验室分析、建模和计算。概述：山脉是世界的水塔，因为它们向下游地区输送大量的降雨和融水。在秘鲁西部干旱的低地，来自安第斯山脉的径流对于满足与水电生产、采矿和农业有关的家庭和工业用水需求至关重要（Vuille等人，2018）。然而，不断增长的水需求、预计的气候变暖（Pabón-Caicedo等人，2020）以及秘鲁山地冰川的持续退缩（Zemp等人，2019）正在加剧国家水资源短缺，并确认需要进行有效的水资源规划。其中一个关键瓶颈是缺乏对安第斯山脉降雨和融水如何通过陆地水循环传播到下游最终用户的水文过程的理解（Buytaert等人，2017）。在秘鲁安第斯山脉，广阔的山地湿地系统，在当地被称为bofedales，被认为是重要的储水库，可以季节性地调节储水的释放，因此，可能会控制向下游最终用户提供山地径流（Buytaert等人，2011）。这些自然基础设施还通过改变山地径流、丰富当地生物多样性和充当相当大的碳储存库，提供更广泛的生态系统服务（Hribljan et al., 2015）。然而，它们极易受到气候变暖、冰川退缩和泥炭开采带来的水文气候变化和人为干扰的影响（Polk et al., 2017）。尽管它们具有潜在的水文意义和对环境变化的高度脆弱性，但我们目前对双足水文学的了解非常有限。本研究旨在通过发展新的过程理解来解决这一知识差距。这将以新的和现有的现场测量为基础，这些测量将用于描述山区水源和路径动态及其相互作用（例如雪、冰川、山坡、地下水）。一旦建立，新的过程理解将在计算冰川水文模型中实施，并根据实地数据进行验证，有可能利用它来探索bofedales在满足下游人类和环境用水需求方面的更广泛意义。

Project Summary (Please do not exceed 4000 characters, including spaces):Project highlights:The development and validation of hydrological process understanding of high-altitude mountain wetlands (bofedales) that will transform understanding of mountain water provision to highly dependent and vulnerable end users in Peru. Co-developed with end-users (CONDESAN) to maximise the impact of the project in regional water resource planning in Peru. A multi-disciplinary project that is closely aligned with NERCs most-wanted skills including: freshwater science, fieldwork, laboratory analysis, modelling and numeracy.Overview:Mountains are the world's water towers because they convey large rainfall inputs and meltwater from snow and glaciers to downstream regions. In the arid lowlands of western Peru, runoff from the Andes mountain range is pivotal in meeting domestic and industrial water demand relating to hydropower production, mining and agriculture (Vuille et al., 2018). However, rising water demand, projected climate warming (Pabón-Caicedo et al., 2020), and the continued retreat of Peru's mountain glaciers (Zemp et al., 2019) are exacerbating national water scarcity and affirm the need for effective water resource planning. A key bottleneck to this, is lack of hydrological process understanding relating to how Andean rainfall and meltwater propagates through the terrestrial water cycle to downstream end users (Buytaert et al., 2017).In the Peruvian Andes, vast mountain wetland systems, locally known as bofedales, are thought to be important water stores that regulate the release of stored water seasonally and, therefore, are likely to control the provision of mountain runoff to downstream end users (Buytaert et al., 2011). These natural infrastructures also provide wider ecosystem services by alteringmountain runoff, enriching local biodiversity and acting as a considerable carbon store (Hribljan et al., 2015). They are, however, extremely vulnerable to hydroclimatic shifts and anthropogenic disturbances brought about by climate warming, glacier retreat, and peat exploitation (Polk et al., 2017). Despite their potential hydrological significance and high vulnerability to environmental change, our current understanding of bofedales hydrology is very limited. This study aims to address this knowledge gap by developing new process-understanding of bofedales hydrology. This will be underpinned by new and existing in-situ field measurements which will be used to characterise bofedales water sources and pathways dynamics and their interactions (e.g. snow, glaciers, hillslopes, groundwater). Once established, the new process-understanding will be implemented in a computational glacier-hydrology model and validated against field data, with the potential to use this to explore the wider significance of bofedales in meeting downstream human and environmental water demand.