http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/glaciernatlpark_030901.html
Related Links:
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-pg-glacier,0,7388343.photogallery?index=4
Photos of Glacier National Park (Multiple photos of Grinell Glacier)
http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/world/content/land5.html
USGS photo of Boulder Glacier in 1932 and photo showing it gone
by 1988
http://tv.oneworld.net/tapestry?link=366
Dr Dan Fagre estimates that all glaciers will be gone
from Glacier National Park by 2030
[
Photos
of Boulder Glacier, Glacier Nat'l Park, 1932, 1988... ]
[ Photos
from below of Grinell Glacier, Glacier Nat'l Park, 1911, 2000...
]
[
Photos from above of Grinell Glacier, Glacier Nat'l Park, 1938,
1981, 1988... ]
Sept 1, 2001
Glacial Retreat
Scientists Say Glaciers Are Melting at Alarming
Rate
By Bill Redeker
CAPTION:
"St. Mary Lake provides a scenic entrance on the east side
of Glacier National Park in this undated file photo from
Montana's tourism promotion office." (Travel Montana/AP Photo)
GLACIER NATIONAL PARK,
Mont., Sept. 1 - On the fabled Going-to-the-Sun
Road, which clings to the mountainside here and provides breathtaking
views of the Continental Divide, Glacier National Park looks as
healthy as ever.
Snow and glaciers can
be viewed as far as the eye can see.
But for scientists who study glaciers, all they see are remnants
of glaciers, which are melting and shrinking at an alarming rate.
"Predictions are
that within 30 years, almost all the glaciers
will be gone from Glacier," said Blase Reardon, a biological
sciences technician with the U.S. Geological Survey.
"One of the problems
of the last 10 years is that the glaciers
have been fragmenting into smaller pieces," he added.
Now there's proof of
just how fast the massive blocks of
moving ice are retreating. For the first time in 35 years,
the USGS has conducted an exhaustive photographic evaluation
of the million-acre park. By comparing historic photos taken
around the turn of the 20th century, scientists can point
to a rapidly diminishing number of glaciers.
Park records reveal
there were about 150 glaciers 100 years ago.
"We estimate there's
about 26 ice bodies that still qualify
as glaciers," said Dan Fagre, who headed the project for
the
USGS. "Since there were about 37 named glaciers in 1968,
we've lost 11 glaciers."
Scientists agree that
global warming and a reduction in
precipitation are to blame. But they disagree whether man
is the source.
Steve Thompson, glacier
program manager for the National Parks
Conservation Association, says all the data he's reviewed points
to carbon dioxide from factories and automobiles.
"The cause seems
to be very clear," he said. "It is the burning
of fossil fuels. We've dramatically increased the amount of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that's not happening here
in Montana per se. It happens globally and it affects our
national park right here."
Fagre disagrees.
"What you cannot
do is make a direct link between the cause
of the current warming we are experiencing and the retreat
of the glaciers," he said. "The glaciers don't respond
to CO2
[carbon dioxide] directly; they only respond to the temperatures."
Warming Has
Long-Term Effects
The impact of warming
on Glacier National Park is both profound
and long-lasting. The tree line is moving up the mountains,
adding fuel for future fires.The stream flows will eventually
become a trickle and food sources for trout and grizzly bears
will eventually be eliminated.
"Unless we get
some significant changes in our current rates
of warming," said Fagre, "the glaciers of this park
are pretty
much doomed."
There is one other,
more subjective impact: the loss of beauty.
As Renold and Marjorie
Masters from Wenatchee, Wash., toured
Lake McDonald, they could not help but notice the changes since
they last visited in 1953.
"I stood right
here at Lake McDonald and took the same
picture 50 years ago," said Renold.
And today? "The
glaciers are gone!" he marveled.
Some 7,000 years after
glaciers scoured the mountains and
sculpted the landscape here, they have all but disappeared.
And it is happening in our lifetime.
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