Environmental activist Sonam Wangchuk brings innovative idea

Kargil, Dec 24: In the mountain desert of Ladakh, water has long been a valued and scarce resource.

People in Ladakh rely almost entirely on glacial and permafrost melt for water. However, in recent years, due to rapidly receding glaciers, water shortages in Ladakh have become more severe. In years to come, experts expect this problem to worsen. Despite this issue, Ladakhis continue to innovate and adapt to the harsh and changing climate. Artificial glaciers (Ice stupas) are one example of this innovation. People in several areas of Kargil and Leh districts in Ladakh have started creating Artificial glaciers in many areas to overcome water scarcity in summers.

The people of several far off and high elevation areas in Ladakh Union Territory started making of Artificial Glacier with community involvement to creates an ice Stupa. Besides solving the water crisis in the region, these inventive stupas have also become an important tourist attraction in Ladakh. " We face difficulties in summers when there is minimal water resources available for agricultural, thus over the years we have started creating artificial glaciers in many areas near to out fields that help us in irrigation during summer season for farming, " Morup Stanzin , a local from Leh said.

The ice stupa, a kind of artificial glacier, is the brainchild of a famous Ladakhi engineer and innovator named Sonam Wangchuk who created first Ice Stupa in 2015, taking inspiration from ancestral practices and veteran Ladakhi civil engineer Chewang Norphel’s work on artificial glaciers, Ice Stupas have been designed at various locations across Ladakh ever since. Chewang Norphel is also known as Ice man. Ice Stupa is a form of glacier grafting technique that creates artificial glaciers, used for storing winter water (which otherwise would go unused) in the form of conical shaped ice heaps.

During summer, when water is scarce, the Ice Stupa melts to increase water supply for crops. To create an ice stupa, pipes connect to a stream of water from higher in the mountains which flows down and cold temperatures do the rest. An artificial glacier can go upto a height of 50-70 ft. Using basic and inexpensive techniques, a conical structure of wood and steel is built and then gravity, rather than electricity, is used to bring water diverted from a nearby streams during the rainy season, and sprayed this into the air like a fountain. The sub-zero temperatures quickly freeze the water into the conical structure, so that a mass of ice begins to grow.

The end result has the same high, narrow dome-shape typical of Buddhist shrines, hence the “stupa” part of the name, which slows down subsequent melting because the surface area exposed to the sun and warm temperatures is minimised. When the warmer, arid growing season arrives, the lower altitude streams quickly dry up and there is little water available again until June when the glaciers provide meltwater again.

It is in this crucial window that the ice stupas start melting, offering an invaluable source of water for irrigation early in the growing season, extending the cropping season by a few weeks – which makes all the difference in this extreme agricultural environment. However , since a couple of years the prominent climate activist from Ladakh Sonam Wangchuk has further brought innovation into this and worked on the idea of digital automation to make Ice Stupas . As per Wangchuk Automation plays a crucial role in optimising the effectiveness and efficiency of Ice Stupas. Automated systems control the flow of water, ensuring precise distribution and optimal conditions for ice formation. Advanced monitoring technology tracks weather patterns and water levels in real-time, enabling adjustments to be made promptly enhancing the scalability of Ice Stupa projects.