Documenting Glaciers in the Dying Days of Ice
As the National Park Service turns 100, we’re looking at how climate change affects our shared heritage and what the agency is doing about it. This is our fourth story in a series.
By Brian Kahn
August 3, 2016
National Parks have grown up with photography. So it’s only fitting that in the last days of ice in Montana’s Glacier National Park, Lisa McKeon is using a camera to show how quickly climate change has killed off the park’s namesakes.
After all, it’s one thing to note that of the park’s 150 glaciers that existed in the late 1800s, only 25 of them remain today. But it’s another to see what that cold, hard fact looks like on the landscape.
For nearly 20 years, McKeon, a U.S. Geological Survey biologist, has prowled dusty archives to find old photos showing the splendor of the park’s glaciers in decades past. Those images have taken her to bushwhacking through the forest and to the highest reaches of the park so she can recreate those images.
http://reports.climatecentral.org/nps/glacier/?
