[GLIMS] Support for Ricardo Villalba

[Etienne Berthier]

Dear cryolisters, 

"S_cientists cannot be sent to jail for their
findings_"

 We would like to inform you about the unacceptable
situation of our colleague Ricardo Villalba (IANIGLA, Argentina). Many
of you probably know Ricardo for his scientific achievements
(https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=27oYl3QAAAAJ [1]). Now,
Ricardo is accused of having favoured mining activities in his position
of director of the National Glacier Inventory in Argentina. Briefly, he
is accused of having mapped only glaciers larger than 1 ha (0.01 km²)
leaving smaller ice bodies uncharted and, doing so, favouring mining
activities. The coming week will be decisive. 

 As a community how can
we help? Last August, several members of GLIMS (Global Land Ice
Measurements from Space) and the WGMS (World Glacier Monitoring Service)
wrote two letters to inform the Argentinian justice that their national
glacier inventory was being performed following state-of-the-art
international standards. As you may know, every glacier inventory has to
defined a minimum area mapping threshold and the one used by our
Argentinian colleagues of IANIGLA (0.01 km²) is among the smallest used
so far, illustrating how detailed and comprehensive their inventory work
is. 

 These letters did not convince the judge. We believe we should
now support much more loudly our colleague. Several years ago, the
seismological community stood up furiously to support their scientific
colleagues following the Aquila's earthquake. Several months ago, we
_marched for Science_. It is now time for the wide cryo-community to
express loudly its support to one colleague, accused of doing his
scientific work as best as possible.

 If, like us, you trust the
scientific work produced by our Argentinian colleague and want to
support him, we ask you to: 

 (i) the sign the support letter (in which
you will find much more details about the case)

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeHCU7ckSoie1BscOnsfKQO_byFkgx3lTA8A-7LbtLFmxX7cg/viewform?c=0&w=1
[2]
 Note that you can provide your email in the mandatory field
"Passport / ID" if you prefer.

(ii) contact journalists and public
media to raise attention of a wide-public around this unbelievable and
unacceptable story. Cryo-blog (from EGU, Glacier Hub, AGU, etc…) may
also want to report on this. 

(iii) Socities, Union and other
organizations such IGS, AGU, EGU, IACS etc... may issue some official
statements to express their support. 

(iv) forward the message beyond
the cryolist. All scientists should be fighting vigorously to help
Ricardo. So spread the word in your institute.

Thanks for your active
support and rapid actions,

 Etienne Berthier, member of the GLIMS core
team, reviewer of the National Glacier Inventory of Argentina
 Bruce H.
Raup, Director of Global Land Ice Measurement from Space (GLIMS) 

Michael Zemp, Director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS)

Jeffrey S. Kargel, former Director of GLIMS and current member of the
GLIMS core team
 Samuel Nussbaumer, WGMS
 Adina Racoviteanu, Tobias
Bolch, Frank Paul, members of the GLIMS core team

 

Links:
------
[1]
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=27oYl3QAAAAJ
[2]
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeHCU7ckSoie1BscOnsfKQO_byFkgx3lTA8A-7LbtLFmxX7cg/viewform?c=0&w=1
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