Page 27 - ARUBA TODAY 29August2015
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SCIENCESaturday 29 August 2015
Scientists, tribe study shrinking U.S. glacier
PHUONG LE In this Aug. 7, 2015, photo Oliver Grah and Jezra Beaulieu, scientists hired by the Nooksack Indian Tribe, hike toward Sholes
Associated Press Glacier in the Mount Baker Wilderness, Wash.
MOUNT BAKER, Washington
(AP) — Mauri Pelto digs his Associated Press
crampons into the steep
icy slope on Mount Baker in Yosemite National Park perature and changes to for agriculture, cities and and ultimately fish habitat
in the northwestern state of in California have retreat- high-elevation ecosystems. tribes during the late sum-
Washington and watches ed over the past century, In 1850, there were 150 gla- mer. The icy glacial melt and restoration planning.
as streams of water cas- losing about two-thirds of ciers at Glacier National keeps streams cool for fish
cade off the thick mass of their surface areas. In Alas- Park; now there are 25. and replenishes rivers dur- On a recent day in August,
bare, bluish ice. The water ka, a recent study of 116 “These glaciers are, from ing a time of year when
carves vertical channels in glaciers estimated they a geological standpoint, they typically run low. Grah and colleague Jezra
the face of the glacier as it have lost about 75 billion rapidly disappearing from For the Nooksack Indian
rushes downstream. metric tons of ice every the landscape,” said Dan Tribe, which has relied for Beaulieu hiked 5 miles into
What little snow from last year from 1994 to 2013. In Fagre, a research ecolo- hundreds of years on salm-
winter is already gone, so Montana, scientists are al- gist with U.S. Geological on runs in the glacier-fed the Sholes Glacier to study
ice is melting off the glacier ready seeing the impacts Survey stationed in Glacier Nooksack River, a way of
at a rate of nearly three in increased stream tem- National Park. “They’re so life is at risk. Without that how climate change will
inches a day this summer, small and vulnerable that glacial runoff, rivers will dry
he said. they could be gone in a up more quickly and warm influence the timing and
“At the rate it’s losing mass, matter of decades.” up faster, making it harder
it won’t make it 50 years,” Glaciers —thick masses of for salmon to spawn or mi- magnitude of stream flow
said Pelto, a glaciologist accumulated snow that grate to the ocean.
who returned this month compress into ice and “Climate change will im- in the river. It’s their fifth
for the 32nd year to study move — are important in- pact the ability of tribal
glaciers in the North Cas- dicators of climate change members to harvest fish field trip to the glacier this
cades range. “This is a dy- because they are driven in the future,” said Oliver
ing glacier,” he said. by precipitation and tem- Grah, water resources summer, and each time
Glaciers on Mount Baker perature. manager for the tribe,
and other mountains in the The glaciers on Mount which has teamed up with they’re amazed at how
North Cascades are thin- Baker, a volcanic peak Pelto. They want to know
ning and retreating. Seven northwest of Seattle, pro- how glacier runoff will af- rapidly the snow and ice
have disappeared over vide a critical water source fect the river’s hydrology
the past three decades,
and the overall volume of
glaciers in the range have
lost about one-fifth of their
volume.
The shrinking glaciers here
mirror what is happening
around the U.S. and world-
wide: As the planet warms,
glaciers are losing volume,
some faster than others.
Two of the largest glaciers
are melting.
Grah strings a measuring
tape across the stream,
wades in shin-deep in the
fast-moving, brownish
water and measures the
depth of the water stream-
ing from the toe of the gla-
cier. He calls out numbers
that Beaulieu records in a
yellow notebook. They’re
trying to calculate how
much flow and sediment is
coming from the glacier.q
