EPFL goes to New Zealand to study melting glaciers

Four EPFL researchers will explore New Zealand's glacier-fed streams for two months, marking the first step in a global journey that will take them across 15 countries by 2021. Discover more about this unique expedition on the EPFL Out There blog. What else besides water do we lose as glaciers vanish? That's the question a team of scientists led by EPFL will set out to answer by exploring and studying the world's most prominent mountain glaciers. New Zealand marks the first step towards this three-year scientific adventure around the world. The project, called "Vanishing Glaciers" is lead from Switzerland by Tom Battin, professor and director of the Stream Biofilm and Ecosystem Research Laboratory (SBER). By collecting microorganisms from hundreds of glacier-fed streams and analyzing their genomes, the scientists hope to understand, before it disappears, how this microbial life has adapted to the extreme conditions it is exposed to and how it is changing as the world's mountain glaciers melt. Read our news article from 27.07.2018: "EPFL scientists set out to explore microbial life in glacier streams" After several months of training in Switzerland, the field team is now ready to departure.