Glacier Bay National Park in southeast Alaska is famous for its glaciers that flow into the sea. A handful of these tidewater glaciers are accessible via boat, giving visitors a close-up view of towering ice fronts and dramatic calving events. But most of the park’s glaciers are inland, deep in the Alaskan wilderness, where the changes are more difficult to observe with human eyes.
“Glacier Bay National Park is a well-known and visited area that is showing significant ice loss,” said Christopher Shuman, a University of Maryland, Baltimore County glaciologist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “But all the glacier thinning and retreat, as well as increased debris-cover and dramatic landslides, haven’t been fully documented yet.”
Views from above, acquired by aircraft or satellites, are helping scientists understand the extent of change across the region.
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Image via NASA Earth Observatory