Part of the Pastoruri snowcapped mountain in the central Peruvian Andes, 450 km east of Lima

Peru's glaciers have shrunk by more than 40 percent since 1970 because of climate change, giving birth to nearly 1,000 new lagoons, national water authority ANA said Thursday.

Peru, which is hosting the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 20, in December, used satellite images to carry out the glacier inventory ahead of the high-level meeting.

The worst-affected glacier was 5,200-meter-high (17,000-foot) tourist gem Pastoruri in the Andes mountains, which lost 52 percent of its surface to melting over the last four decades as a direct result of climate change, the ANA found.

Peru has 2,679 glaciers across 20 mountain chains that cover about 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles).

The South American country is one of the world's most biodiverse, with habitats ranging from the Amazon rainforest to snowy mountaintops.

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© 2014 AFP