WHERE ARE WE GOING?
GAPS 2024-25 aims to sample surface snow from glaciers and ice caps all over the world . Ideally these will be at altitude, away from any major conurbations and relatively little trafficked.
With so many glaciers and ice caps in remote and challenging environments, this is somewat challenging and the odds may not be entirely in our favour. Sound like fun?
If you have an expedition going to a suitable region during 2024 or 2025 we would love to hear from you on
Where Are We Going?
Some mountains require more permits, form-filling and bureaucracy than others. Some ice caps and glaciers are more remote than others. Organising expeditions to these areas can take a long time. As expeditions and teams are put in place, they will be added to the map below.Expeditions Planned, Completed and In Progress
Viable Targets
For consistency, we are limiting ourselves to glaciers and ice caps. Ideally these will be:-
- at altitude so that the sample is not unduly affected by, for example, winds channelled through valleys.
- away from any major conurbations so that the results are not swayed by proximity to plastics from nearby towns and factories.
- relatively little trafficked to avoid contamination by microplastics from technical clothing.
Roughly 10% of the world's surface is covered in ice in the form of almost 200,000 glaciers and ice caps. Unfortunately, from the point of view of a microplastics survey, this ice is not uniformly distributed. The locations of the world's major glaciated regions are shown on the map below based on the data from the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) organisation.
Notwithstanding difficulties due to remoteness, altitude or polar conditions, such an uneven distribution of ice makes it difficult to conduct a fair survey of the distribution of nanoplastics and microplastics. Fortunately, the situation is not as bad as it might first seem. Winds circulate in a generally east-west direction and the the symmetry of the planet makes things simpler. We therefore take a pragmatic approach and aim to have at least one expedition to each of the world's glaciated regions. These regions are shown below.
Target Regions
