Last glaciers in Glacier National Park gone by 2020
By Geoff Morgan New research from Glacier National Park, Montana, indicates that the park’s glaciers are disappearing at faster rate than previously believed. Dr. Dan Fagre, of the United States Geological Survey, has studied the glaciers and ecology of Glacier National Park since 1991, and is now suggesting that all glaciers in the national park will have disappeared by 2020. In years previous, research indicated that glaciers throughout the park would disappear by 2030. But new research from Fagre’s office has accelerated that date by 10 years, and he now believes that the park, named for its glacial formations, will lose all of its glaciers by 2020. These glaciers have been on the landscape for 7,000 years, he argues, and they are in danger of disappearing within 10 years. “Mountain alpine glaciers will disappear within current lifetimes.” The focal glaciers in Dr. Fagre’s research are Sperry, Grinell and Swift Current Glaciers –all of which are located in Glacier National Park. His research focuses most intensively on these three while expending less time, due to limited resources, on several other park glaciers, including Chaney Glacier. According to Dr. Fagre, more than a century ago, in 1850, approximately 150 glaciers existed in the park. In the 1960s and 70s, only 37 named glaciers remained. At present, Dr. Fagre says, the park is left with 25. … “They truly are disappearing faster,” he says. … Dr. Fagre’s research may sound alarming: it suggests that dramatic changes in the landscape are imminent, and suggests “we will need to do some adapting.”
