ABSTRACT
The history of the many small glaciers that still survive in the remote recesses of the Pyrenees and the southern Maritime Alps of Italy has received comparatively little attention. Only in the 1990s was the presence of ice on the Macizo Central of the Picos de Europa recognized, when it was revealed by melting of the formerly perennial snow cover (Suàrez and Alonso 1994). Some ice may remain on the Sierra Nevada in southern Spain but information about it is sparse. The Calderone, the only glacier in the Apennines and the southernmost in Europe, clings to the Corno Grande, 2912 m, the highest peak of the Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi east of Rome.
