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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Bethan DaviesORCiD, Dr Owen King
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
High-altitude wetlands are critical ecosystems that store water, regulate downstream flows, and sustain biodiversity. Their persistence is tightly linked to continuous water inputs from precipitation, groundwater, snow and glacier melt, making them highly vulnerable to climate-driven shifts in mountain hydrology. Rapid glacier retreat, altered precipitation regimes, and rising temperatures are transforming water availability across mountain regions worldwide, but their consequences for wetland stability remain poorly understood. Here, using high-resolution satellite-based mapping (2019–2025) and statistical analyses, we investigate the spatiotemporal dynamics and hydroclimatic drivers of high-altitude wetlands at two tropical Andean study sites in Peru: Cordillera Vilcanota and the La Raya. We demonstrate that precipitation-derived water is the primary driver of wetland seasonality, explaining up to 30% of the observed variability. This influence weakens in areas close to glaciers, where wetlands exhibit reduced seasonal fluctuations in surface wetting and drying, suggesting a local dampening effect of glacial runoff on wetland hydrological variability. Our spatially explicit analysis demonstrates that this dampening effect attenuates rapidly with distance and is no longer detectable beyond approx. 12 km from glaciers, indicating that the hydrological influence of glacier melt is highly localized and that most high-mountain wetlands are effectively decoupled from glacier-melt processes. The study highlights the critical role of glacier–wetland hydrological connectivity in the context of hydrological changes in mountain regions. e2026EF008149
Author(s): Xuan D, Becker R, Valverde MV, Davies BJ, Ely JC, King O, Montoya N, Onof C, Ross AC, Buytaert W
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Earth's Future
Year: 2026
Volume: 14
Issue: 6
Print publication date: 23/06/2026
Online publication date: 23/06/2026
Acceptance date: 01/06/2026
Date deposited: 24/06/2026
ISSN (electronic): 2328-4277
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EF008149
DOI: 10.1029/2026EF008149
Data Access Statement: The data, code, and results used in the study are available at Zenodo via https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18261913 with Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (Xuan et al., 2026).
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