distributed-buffer-resilience-utac

GenesisAeon Package 103 — distributed hydrological/ecosystem buffer resilience for deglacierizing catchments. Companion to glacier-buffer-utac (P99, the loss) and glacier-buffer-replacement-utac (P100, technical replacement). Deliberately has no UTAC/CREP/AFET bridge — see DISCLAIMER.md.

For a plain-language explanation of the same topic (German, no jargon, written for general audiences), see WHITEPAPER.md.

The core idea

A single storage type can't replace a glacier. What actually buffers a deglacierizing catchment is a portfolio of reservoirs, groundwater, wetlands, snow, and demand management, each with a different response time — not one component sized to do the whole job.

Two explicit confidence tiers

• Core (drought_buffer, storage_portfolio, water_towers, ecosystem_services): real, peer-reviewed findings independently re-verified 2026-08-14.
• Optional / speculative (gbr): a ratio-style score this ecosystem constructed from a source document's own proposed formula — not a published metric. Always exposed with GBR_NOT_PEER_REVIEWED_WARNING.

What's real here (core)

• van Tiel et al. (2026, HESS) — the strongest empirical anchor in the whole P99–P103 series: during the extreme 2022 Swiss drought, glacier melt across 88 catchments still substantially buffered precipitation/snowmelt deficits — yet absolute summer meltwater volume was already lower than 2003 in roughly two-thirds of studied catchments. The buffer works AND its capacity is eroding, at the same time, already observed, not projected.
• Farinotti et al. (2016, ERL) — the ~65% Alpine reservoir summer-deficit ceiling, correctly scoped as a specific, regional, scenario-bound estimate (not a universal constant — see FARINOTTI_2016_SCOPE_NOTE).
• Farinotti et al. (2019, Nature) — global theoretical ice-free-basin storage potential (875±260 km³ across ~185,000 glaciers), with only ~40% (355 km³) judged realistically suitable after a first-pass screen.
• Pritchard (2017, Nature) and Immerzeel et al. (2020, Nature) — glaciers as a disproportionate drought buffer, and the Water Tower Index ranking mountain water systems by importance AND vulnerability (1.9 billion people dependent globally).
• Velasquez Casallas et al. (2025, Ecosystem Services) — a systematic review finding postglacial ecosystem services can increase, but heterogeneously, with real trade-offs — never assume a Nature-based Solution is hydrologically positive purely from its label. nbs_effect_is_guaranteed_positive() always returns False.

Quickstart

pip install distributed-buffer-resilience-utac

from distributed_buffer_resilience_utac import (
    SWISS_2022_DROUGHT,
    buffer_functions_while_eroding,
    reservoir_summer_deficit_ceiling_fraction,
    GLOBAL_STORAGE_POTENTIAL,
    is_disproportionate_drought_buffer,
    nbs_effect_is_guaranteed_positive,
    GBR_NOT_PEER_REVIEWED_WARNING,
    glacier_buffer_replacement_score,
)

print(SWISS_2022_DROUGHT.catchment_count)          # 88
print(buffer_functions_while_eroding())             # True
print(reservoir_summer_deficit_ceiling_fraction())  # 0.65
print(GLOBAL_STORAGE_POTENTIAL.realistic_km3)       # 355.0
print(is_disproportionate_drought_buffer(10.0, 40.0))  # True
print(nbs_effect_is_guaranteed_positive())          # False

print(GBR_NOT_PEER_REVIEWED_WARNING)
score = glacier_buffer_replacement_score(
    deficit_without_adaptation=[10.0, 10.0],
    flow_gain_from_adaptation=[5.0, 0.0],
)
print(score)  # 0.25

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pre-commit install
ruff check src tests
mypy src
pytest

Citation

See CITATION.cff and .zenodo.json.