One of the trading routes that collectively made up the famed Silk Road of ancient times is under threat from melting glaciers in nearby mountains. The Hexi corridor in Gansu province, China, now experiencing regional floods, will not be the only ancient site endangered by glaciers according to researchers into global warming.

According to an online environmental news article in New Scientist, hydrologists have been able to determine that flooding in the province is not caused by any increase in precipitation in the mountains. In fact, the area is extremely arid. The mountain glaciers fed the springs that provided water for agriculture. This made the province a breadbasket for the area. Some 26 million people live along the corridor today and rely on the springs for water.

Climate change seems to be causing glaciers to retreat in Gansu province, bringing heavy floods now, and – if predictions are right – chronic water shortages in the future. Temperatures in the mountains have risen by 0.04 degrees Celsius per year on average since the 1980s and the glaciers have been creeping back up the mountain slopes, sometimes by as much as 7 meters (20 feet) in a single year.

 Most of the glaciers along the Hexi corridor are predicted to disappear by 2050. Like other arid regions at the foot of melting glaciers, the corridor will experience floods and then dry up completely when the glaciers melt away.

The hydrologists reported their findings in an article titled “Rising Springs along the Silk Road” in the journal Geology.