Water resources management in Chile
Much of Chile is dominated by the Andes Mountain range and many high altitude glaciers. With rising temperatures, the IPCC warns of increased melting for many of these glaciers, with some of them disappearing as early as 2020–2030. The Third Assessment Report from the IPCC indicate a critical situation for glaciers in neighboring countries such as Bolivia and Peru. The IPCC report goes on to say that glaciers in Chile are drastically reducing their volume at an increasing rate and that changes in temperature and humidity are the primary cause. In an article from Science Daily in March 2008, the news agency reports that, "if the inter-tropical glaciers of Chile, Argentina, and Colombia disappear, water availability and hydropower generation will be affected." Of the thirty test glaciers monitored in the Andes by the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) only Chile's Echaurren Norte glacier thickened between 2005 and 2006.
Geography of Chile
The southern portion of central Chile contains a mixture of some excellent agricultural lands, many of which were covered originally with old-growth forests. They were cleared for agriculture but were soon exhausted of their organic matter and left to erode. Large tracts of this worn-out land, many of them on hilly terrain, have been reforested for the lumber, especially for the cellulose and paper industries. New investments during the 1980s in these industries transformed the rural economy of the region. The pre-Andean highlands and some of the taller and more massive mountains in the coastal range (principally the Cordillera de Nahuelbuta) still contain large tracts of old-growth forests of remarkable beauty, some of which have been set aside as national parks. Between the coastal mountains and the ocean, many areas of central Chile contain stretches of land that are lower than the Central Valley and are generally quite flat. The longest beaches can be found in such sections.