The Importance Of Glaciers In The Andes

When President Taft created Glacier National Park in 1910, it had about 150 glaciers. Since then, the number has decreased to less than 30, and those remaining have shrunk by two-thirds. Dr. Daniel Fagre (2015) predicts that within the next 30 years most if not all of the park's glaciers will melt. Glacier National Park is not the only place effected. The snow on Kilimanjaro has melted more than 80 percent since 1912. Glaciers at the Garhwal Himalaya in India are melting so fast that researchers believe that most central and eastern Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Greenlands coastal glaciers have melted to the point of no return. “These peripheral glaciers and ice caps can be thought of as colonies of ice that are in rapid decline,

Remote sensing has become a very valuable tool for documenting the response of glacier to changing climate (Bamber and Kwok, 2003; Kuhn, 2007; Pellikka, 2007; Solomon et al, 2007) because the rugged terrain, inaccessibility and legendary poor weather of glacier areas has resulted in relatively few field- based studies. Indeed, in order to use glaciers and their changes as indicators of climate change, or as an early warning signal for sea level rise, remote sensing is the only tool to provide glacier change information from all the continents and from a large number of glaciers and ice sheets. On the other hands, because space borne and airborne remote sensing data provide superior cost- effective and area effective data and methods for monitoring the glaciers and their changes, part of this monitoring can be carried out by it.

This problem could mark either the end of human civilizations or mark the beginning of the next era of human development. It would decide on our species survival, whether there will be another mass extinction like the one 65 million years ago. The question is “How might the breaking up and melting of continental ice in Greenland and the Antarctic affect Canada’s coastline?”. In the following sections, we have gathered an abundance of information from a variety of sources from which we will discuss, and analyze. We will find out how this data can help us understand the effect of melting glaciers on Canada’s coastline, as well as how and what we could do to stop or slow it down.

Thomas, Lisa. “Climate change on the southern Colorado Plateau.” National Park Services, 2011, www.nps.gov/articles/southern-colorado-climate-change.htm. Accessed March 14,

and come apart and allow for countless sheets of lava to be transferred out over the land (Hay, 1992). Through time the ice caps frequently collected and spread over enormous extents in North America. In this timeframe, movements to the south would occur making the ice push and relocate expansive quantities of soils and rocks. This movement effected how the great glacial streams would flow (Hay, 1992). With the extremely large rains and glacial ice melting valleys and flooding played a great role in the Pleistocene.

Collaborating on an international level remains important for conducting ice patch research due to the rapid melting of alpine ice and decay of valuable artifacts. The work conducted for this thesis included cooperation from Parks Canada. Ice patch research was conducted not only on the U.S. side of the international border, but also on the Canadian side of Chilkoot Pass. Parks Canada allowed me and KLGO archaeologists to use the Canadian warden cabin at the summit of Chilkoot Pass as a basecamp for the ice patch study (Figure 1.4). Working between two sovereign countries emphasizes the matter of climate change as a global issue and the importance in maintaining international relations. Maintaining international relations benefits the scientific community on a global scale and provides significant research opportunities.

Glaciers take part in two of the Earth's cycles hydrology and the rock cycle. When precipitation falls at high attitudes where glaciers exist, the rain or snow becomes a part of the glacier and may be stored in the glacier for up to thousands of years. Glaciers move very slow but are very important in erosion of rocks. (Lutgens & Tarbuck)

The Siberian tundra is basically melting away overtime, even though it has been frozen for tens of thousands of years. At such a fast rate it is speculated that it is influencing global warming. The landscape is changing fast. In the last three to four years, the underlying

Global warming persists as one of the world’s biggest issues today that is causing several problems that include the world’s severe climate and rising sea levels while possibly being the main cause as to why all of mankind could go extinct. This global crisis is known as the steady increase in the world’s average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere and oceans that are proven to be permanently changing the world’s climate (Live Science, 2014). This phenomenon is strongly evident as Earth’s temperature has also increased by 2 degrees Celsius since the last century. As a result of this, Canadian glaciers are melting at a higher rate of 2 to 3 feet than of what it was a decade before (Lerner, 2014). All astoundingly happening while the Artic Canadian permafrost has begun to melt (Davidson,2015). The state of this issue in Canada does not seem to be improving as validated through both the scientific evidence as well as the blatant and irrefutable observable evidence.

Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist, studied a glacier on Mount Baker, in Washington State. The glaciers are melting, as the planet becomes warmer. “At the rate it is losing mass, it won’t make it 50 years,” said Pelto. Glaciers from Mount Baker and the North Cascades are getting smaller. Over the past thirty years, seven glaciers have melted. An estimate was made that the 116 glaciers that they studied in Alaska have lost a total of 75 billion metric tons of ice. There were 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park in 1850. Now, there are only 25."They are losing volume at a faster rate than ever before," Pelto said. "If you cannot sustain a glacier at a place like this in the Lower 48 states, there is no hope."

The evolution of the Grand Canyon National Park has been one of the marvels of the world to which many researchers had dedicated substantial amount of controversial studies in attempt to accurately estimate the origin of the canyons and caves/gorges ages and Colorado Plateau current attained mean elevation of nearly horizontal sedimentary rocks based on numerous scientific interpretation of new research data without consideration of a slew of prior geologic data sets that confused geologists many generations ago. It is widely believed in the industry that weather element and volcanism during the ice ages (Cenozoic period) raised the amount of water in the Colorado River drainage system which increased the speed of the Colorado river and its active tributaries and its ability to cut through rocks many years ago, steepened the river (tributaries) gradient attributed to the uplift of the Colorado Plateau sitting near at sea level and the great depth of the Grand Canyon (Flowers, 2010). Additionally, increased differential erosion rate billions of years ago, exposed major geologic rock structures by cutting almost all the terraced walls of the current Grand Canyons created in part by volcanic activity that deposited lava and ashes across the area which completely obstructed the Colorado river system.

Glaciers have helped define the topography of earth for many years. A glacier is a large mass of ice that has been compacted of snow and ice for a long period of time. The ice age we will be focusing on is the Pleistocene era, which was “a period that began about 2.5 million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago” (513). This was the most recent ice age where it helped formed our present-day lands. During this time, ice covered about 19 million square miles which was about 1/3 of earth’s land surface (515). Many parts of all the continents were covered with ice and that had a great effect on our topography due to the glaciers it created.

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.

Global changes due to the glacial cycle occur, on average, around one hundred times slower than the warming observed over the last century. A very fast rate of change has a very different affect on the climate system, and the ability of natural systems to adapt to change.

At 5,895 meters, Mt. Kilimanjaro is the tallest freestanding mountain. But lately, the glaciers on this towering mountain have been noticeably decreasing. The media has conflicting headlines and theories. Scientists have been studying this problem for many years, the receding glaciers have not been narrowed down to one exact cause. Theories range from climate change to undersurface magma, yet, no one knows how we can limit the melting glaciers.