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This photo is from Photo Gallery: Extreme Ice Survey
Bolivia Mountain
Photograph by James Balog
The town of El Alto, Bolivia, sprawls beneath snow-draped Huayna Potosi. Glaciers on the 20,000-foot (6,000-meter) mountain feed streams that supply El Alto and the Bolivian capital La Paz with water for irrigation, drinking, and hydroelectric power. As glaciers there continue to shrink, future water supplies will be imperiled. Some studies say the Andes' smaller, lower-altitude glaciers will be gone within a few decades.