Lost ice, new borders

 

Italy and Switzerland are redrawing a small section of their border in the Alps because the glaciers are melting and changing the landscape.

Italy and Switzerland to redraw Alpine border due to melting glaciers

Melting glaciers changed the topography of a roughly 330-foot-long segment of the border between Italy and Switzerland.

"The change, which impacts an approximately 330-foot-long segment of the border, is happening near one of Europe’s most popular skiing destinations, Zermatt, and the iconic Matterhorn mountain. One of the biggest glaciers near Matterhorn, the Theodul Glacier, retreated almost 1,000 feet between 1990 to 2015.

The melting, which has been attributed to climate change, revealed new topographical details that raised new questions about the dimensions of the border between the two countries. In 2022, the jurisdiction of a glacial Italian mountain lodge there came under question when melting ice revealed the refuge was actually straddling the border.

“Significant sections of the border are defined by the watershed or ridge lines of glaciers, firn or perpetual snow,” the Swiss government said in a statement obtained by Bloomberg. “These formations are changing due to the melting of glaciers.”

There's a really good graphic image showing why this is happening here, but I can't download it without an account.  

So I'll just use this one below, which is from the Federal Office of Topography swisstopo.