Drought in Puyehue and Rupanco lakes (SoyChile.cl)
After Austral de Osorno revealed the worrying decline in the water levels of Llanquihue Lake in the surrounding of Puerto Octay, it was found that is not the only lake basin of the region affected by the lack of rainfall that experts have attributed to climate change.
This is because now the Rupanco and Puyehue lakes in the province of Osorno, have also shown and alarming and disturbing situation. In the first case, locals say that in some sectors the beach has increased from 20 to 200 meters, and in areas normally covered by water can now move on foot or by vehicle.
A similar situation occurs in the Rupanco, where residents also confirm that there is an obvious decline in its water levels, exposing larger portions of land. *This is the year where I’ve seen the worst shortage of water in the lake. It has fallen very little rain. Luckily our pastures are still green, but the lake has suffered," said a local farmer.
For more information please visit: No es sólo el Llanquihue: así lucen los lagos Puyehue y Rupanco por la sequía
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I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of La Frontera. I hold a PhD in Environmental Engineering from the University of Trento (Italy) and completed postdoctoral training at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. I have more than 20 years of experience in water resources research and have previously served as an Associate Researcher at the Center for Climate and Resilience Research (CR)2 and as a member of the Earth Sciences Assessment Group of the Chilean National Research and Development Agency (ANID).
My research lies at the interface of hydrology, data science, and environmental sciences, with a particular focus on the use of gridded datasets and open-source tools to investigate droughts, extreme events, and water-related impacts of global change.
I work across spatial and temporal scales to improve the understanding of catchment-scale hydrological processes and to translate this knowledge into operational modelling, forecasting, and early-warning systems that support robust environmental decision-making.
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