Glaciers in Retreat
Kviarjokull Glacier, Iceland - Used with Permission
Kviarjökull, Upward View
This view is looking toward the ice-field which spawns Kviarjökull. What's interesting about it is the story that it tells. The moraine from which the picture was taken is far older than the current glacier. You can tell this because of the vegetation that is beginning to take hold on a smoothed-out lateral moraine; in Iceland, where soil takes hundreds to thousands of years to form, the vegetation tells you that this part of the former glacier bed is very old.
You can also tell that at one point, the glacier was big enough to scrape the walls of rock on the left and smooth them out—to a degree. You can see the current lateral moraine on the bottom right of the picture. Pressure ridges have formed in the lower foreground of this picture.
At one point Kviarjökull divided, one fork flowed off to the left of this frame, and the other being today's diminished glacier. The terminal moraine from that earlier glacier is over 700 feet high! Compared to it, the current glacier is a dwarf.
Classmate and Photographer, Eric Hatch Presents
Glaciers in Retreat
On trips to Alaska, Iceland and New Zealand, Eric photographed the diminishing mountain glaciers of the northern and southern hemispheres, a consequence of human-induced global warming/climate change. These great monuments to the last ice age, ending about 10,000 years ago, are likely to disappear in the next 50 to 100 years (Accelerated Global Glacier Mass Loss in the Early Twenty-first Century and Climate Change: Mountain Glaciers).
The gallery is scheduled to be displayed in multiple locations, including in the foyer of the Geology Department at Dartmouth. While the gallery will not be on display during our 55th reunion, it will arrive on campus during the summer and will, hopefully, be available for viewing during our fall mini-reunion.
View all the photos at Eric's website: