glacier-buffer-utac

GenesisAeon Package 99 — real glacial hydrological buffer ("peak water") and downstream buffer-loss cascade science. 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.

What's real here

• Huss & Hock (2018, Nature Climate Change): "peak water" — glacier runoff rises, peaks, then declines as ice mass shrinks; the decline removes a real hydrological buffer against summer/drought low water.
• Cauvy-Fraunie et al. (2016, Nature Communications): experimental 31% flow reduction → 6.5x (±1.8) benthic fauna density increase within 2 weeks; 14–16 months to recover; an 11% glacier-cover threshold for abrupt algal/herbivore biomass shifts (33-site field survey).
• Milner et al. (2017, PNAS): synthesis review of glacier shrinkage propagating into downstream hydrology, sediment and biogeochemistry.
• Dunkle et al. (2025, Ecology): loss of meltwater desynchronizes previously asynchronous glacier-/snow-/rain-fed stream resource dynamics.
• Xuan et al. (2026, Earth's Future): wetland glacier-meltwater dependence is spatially heterogeneous — strong near the glacier margin, fading with distance.
• The full glacier → wetland → vegetation → fauna cascade is honestly represented as a literature-supported hypothesis network, not a single measured causal chain — see DISCLAIMER.md.

Quickstart

pip install glacier-buffer-utac

from glacier_buffer_utac import (
    ALL_CASCADE_STAGES,
    is_below_glacier_cover_threshold,
    buffer_sensitivity_multiplier,
    recovery_time_months_range,
)

for stage in ALL_CASCADE_STAGES:
    print(stage.name, "--", stage.mechanism)

print(is_below_glacier_cover_threshold(8.0))   # True
print(buffer_sensitivity_multiplier(0.3))       # 3.33... -- more sensitive as ice shrinks
print(recovery_time_months_range())             # (14, 16)

Development

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

Citation

See CITATION.cff and .zenodo.json.