Essay on The Glaciers of Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park, is a beautiful piece of nature it is a 195 mile nature getaway from the urban life that is lived San Francisco, CA and 315 miles away from the fast pace and overwhelming life that is lived in Los Angeles CA. This place is like no other in the beauty of its nature. The park is “747,956 acres, and is the home to hundreds of wildlife species and thousands of Yosemite plants” (U.S. Nat. Park Service). Yosemite is known for so many beautiful features, from its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves and biological diversity. And also for its two rivers which are the Tuolumne and Merced rivers. These rivers begin in the park and flow as far as west to the

Earth has experienced many episodes of dramatic climate changes with different periods in earth history. There have been periods during which the entire planet has been covered in ice and at another time it has been scorchingly hot and dry. In this regards, earth has experienced at least three major periods of long- term frigid climate and ice ages interspersed with periods of warm climate. The last glacial period which current glaciers are the result of it, occurring during the last years of Pleistocene, from approximately 110,000 to 10,000 years age (Clayton, 1997). Indeed, glaciers present sensitive indicators of climate change and global warming and by estimating and monitoring the dynamic evolution of these ice masses, several

A glacier is a large body of ice that moves slowly across land and are formed by there being a higher snow gain rather than a snow melt. Glaciers move by a small amount of ice melting and the glacier sliding. Glaciers can help and destroy the landscape in front of them but they can also shape the land into something amazing. Glaciers were once present in Minnesota thousands of years ago and played a massive role on the landscape we live on today, and as they melted they left behind large amounts of water and formations.

According to Larry Beck in his work, “The National Park Centennial: What the Parks Mean to Us Today,” Yosemite is far more significant than just a pretty place to visit. This national park holds a great significance in the hearts of Americans, for it represents the strength and determination of our nation amidst the crises which were brought on by the

The geography of the park is primarily known for the 8 glaciers scattered throughout the park. Along with these glaciers there is plenty of high altitude mountains in the park. Off the coast and in the bay there is an extreme amount of geography on the seafloor. The seafloor consists of several cold water corals. For the areas without coral the seafloor is home to lichens that range from all shapes and sizes. On the land the most magnificent sight and what the park is known for are the glaciers which is explained in the name Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. As said before there are eight different glaciers that vary in shape and size. There is the Grand Pacific glacier which id 60-180 feet above sea level and 0-60 feet below sea level. As for many of the glaciers the Grand Pacific is slowly receding year by year. Then there is Johns Hopkins which is perhaps one of the largest of the eight glaciers. It rises an estimated 250 feet above sea level and sinking 200 feet below sea level. Johns Hopkins

Whether it’s useful or useless. Because some day it will be gone forever and we will confront the problems of losing it. The evidences to support the author’s opinion is “ Snow and ice are the Earth’s built-in air conditioner-crucial to the health of the planet. Without winter’s white mantle, Earth will become a heat sponge. As heat escalates, all our sources of fresh water will disappear”. The quote explains the important role of glacier to keep the earth cool down, and deflect the heat from the sun,

Weather and erosion caused large accumulations of detritus to accumulate which is where the cold air causes water to freeze and become ice. Ice Mountain was formed by the natural collision of tectonic plates. Over time this mountain was worn down by rain and by the wind and slowly over thousand of years carved to what it is now. Ice Mountain was designated a National Natural Landmark by the National Natural Landmarks program in 2012. This means that the owner of Ice Mountain, The Nature Conservancy, agreed to attempt to preserve Ice Mountain’s natural bounty as much as possible. The wide variety of uses by man of this nature forged resource is what truly makes this part of mankind’s heritage as well as its uniqueness amongst other nearby mountains being one of only a few natural areas with such a refrigeration

Even though some of the links could not found, I still learned some cool and disturbing facts about glaciers. For example, ice bergs are nicknamed "rivers of ice" because they constantly move like rivers but at a much slower pace. Also if the ice bergs keep melting at the rate that they are, sea levels will rise and cause major damage and cause natural disasters like, flooding. Also the freshwater that's stored within the ice bergs would mix into the saltwater and led to a very limited availability of freshwater. Global warming is a major factor in the melting of the ice bergs and it's up to man to get this problem under

Glaciers of Chile act as a valuable source of fresh water as their summer runoff contributes to several river basins. It is an important water resource to the populated and eco regions of the

Glaciers are one of the most fundamental phenomenon on the planet, and much of their purpose and impact on earth has been well documented and published. Ice sheets, Ice Caps and Glaciers trap nearly 90% of the world's fresh water, and are replenished by snowfall each year. Their existence on this planet dates back 650,000,000 years and yet they are always moving, always shifting and always melting. Before, human existence and even during the brief era of humans, ice dominated all of the earth's landmass and have regulated, created and altered many of the landscapes around the world.

A glacier is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight; it forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. Glaciers slowly deform and flow due to stresses induced by their weight, creating crevasses, seracs, and other distinguishing features. They also abrade rock and debris from their substrate to create landforms such as cirques and moraines. Glaciers form only on land and are distinct from the much thinner sea ice and lake ice that form on the surface of bodies of water.

The glacier itself is controlled throughout a year by its balance, a summer balance combined with a winter balance. In the winter there is heavy snowfall, so large amounts of accumulation with little amounts of ablation. On the flip side when it comes to summer there is large amounts of ablation and a small amount of accumulation, the mass of a glaciers depends on the accumulation and ablation it suffers throughout the year. If the glaciers is cold based it freezes to the ground making it hard to move and in turn erode the landscape, most if not all the erosion occurs in a warm based glacier. The differing colour of each glacier is important, cold based glaciers are white in colour, with little material being picked up but on the flip side warm based glaciers are very dirty in colour and laden with material which helps the erosion

Glacier Erosion are huge blocks of ice that move along the landscape, carving distinct features along the way. There are three main parts of Glacier Erosion: Plucking, Abrasion, and Freeze-Thaw. When the ice moves downhill, rock is plucked from the back wall of a Glacier.

In this letter, I will be telling you about the human impacts on glacial changes and about glaciers itself. By the time you will be reading this, the world’s environmental factors would have changed greatly. Now you must be thinking that I’m crazy, but glaciers actually existed and there is evidence of their existence. There are many pieces of evidence that support the evidence of glaciers, but the following are some of the more common pieces of evidence. Glaciers are a slow moving ice-masses that are formed by the accumulation, compaction, and recrystallization of snow on mountains or near the poles (extremely cold regions). When the water solidifies, it pushes pieces of rock in the outward direction. The rock is at that point plucked and carried out by the streaming ice of the moving glacier. With the weight of the ice over them, these rocks can scratch profoundly into the underlying bedrock, making long, parallel grooves in the bedrock, called striations. Striations are evidence of glaciers because they indicate the direction in which the ice is moving and it can probably tell us how far a glacier has moved in a certain period of time. Waterfalls are also subtle pieces of evidence that glaciers existed. Hanging valleys are typically formed when the main valley has been widened and deepened by glacial erosion, leaving the side valley cut-off from the main valley. Smaller tributary streams flow into the main glacier to form smaller and shallower U-shaped valleys. Larger

The Himalayas in India are important resource of water for the population in India and around the world. Glaciers are in deep trouble due to the climate change and this hurts billions of people in the Ganges River. The snow that falls in the Himalayas compacts into glaciers thus providing a continuous water supply. However melting of the ice is happening faster then predicted and according to a meeting in Denmark sea level rise is about 3 feet by the end of the century. Global warming might trigger worldwide food crisis that will threaten international security. In Montana the ice may disappear in just over a decade and by 2020 glacier will be gone unless changes are done to stop temperature from rising. In the 1980s, the U.S.G.S. began a more systematic study of the remaining glaciers, which has continued to the present day. By 2010, 37 glaciers remained, but only 25 of these were considered to be "active glaciers" of at least 25 acres (0.10 km2) in area. If the current warming trend continues, all of the remaining glaciers in the park will be gone by 2030.Thie glacier retreat follows a worldwide pattern that has accelerated even more since 1980. Without a major climatic change in which cooler and moister weather returns and persists, the mass balance, which is the accumulation rate versus the ablation (melting) rate of glaciers, will continue to be negative and the glaciers will eventually disappear, leaving behind only barren