Climate change is causing Switzerland’s glaciers to melt rapidly. To slow this ice loss, the country’s scientists are now testing an unusual material — sheep wool.
For a long time, synthetic tarps or covers have been laid over glacier ice and snow in the Alps during summer.
The purpose was to reflect sunlight and reduce the amount of heat absorbed by the ice. However, since these covers are typically made of plastic, there is concern they could shed environmentally polluting microfibers.
As an alternative to this problem, covers made of wool are now being tested. The project, called “Keep It Wool,” is led by the environmental organization Summit Foundation and the University of Lausanne. The project aims to test how effective sheep wool can be in slowing ice melt at the Tsanfleuron glacier in western Switzerland.
Project manager Timothee Steiner said they were looking for an alternative material that is environmentally friendly and easily biodegradable. Another key goal of the initiative is to find a use for the vast amounts of sheep wool that go unused in Switzerland.
Every year, roughly 40% to 70% of the wool produced by Swiss sheep is discarded.
Last June, two experimental wool blankets made by the Swiss company Fibsolan were laid across about 200 square meters of the Tsanfleuron glacier. Throughout the summer, researchers compared the effectiveness of the wool blankets against conventional geotextile covers.
Researchers said the initial results have exceeded expectations. Measurements taken every two weeks showed that, like the synthetic covers, the wool blankets were also able to reduce the rate of glacier ice melt.
Fibsolan official Niklaus Sageser said he was surprised himself by the material’s durability. He said he had initially assumed the material might not hold up with the necessary durability.
Elliot Gaffiot, a student on the research team, said, “We weren’t sure what results we’d get. Now we’ve gotten a result that worked incredibly well.”
However, the project’s organizers have made clear that wool blankets are in no way a solution to global warming.
Only about 0.02% of Switzerland’s total glacier area is currently covered by this kind of protective covering. Scientists say the only effective way to halt the long-term trend of glacier melt is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the largest source of which is fossil fuels.
As a result, wool blankets may help slow glacier ice melt locally, but there is no substitute for reducing fossil fuel use in tackling the root cause of climate change.