thumbScientists at the Mount Chacaltaya Laboratory started measuring the Chacaltaya glacier in the 1990s. Predicted at that time to survive until 2015, the glacier melted at a faster rate than expected. By 2009, it had been reduced to a few small patches of ice and snow near the top of the mountain.

Many Bolivians on the Altiplano and in two of Bolivia's main cities -- La Paz and El Alto -- depend on