Glaciers on the Move

**Rating by; John L. Eliot

This Story is about the Ice Ages that happened in the past and the impact of glaciers on the Earth. It is a real eye opener.

This article is about the impact of ice and glaciers on the earth. It describes that glaciers are basically a large moving river of ice that expands and retreats. As a naturalist, Karen Jettmar travels along the Hubbard Glacier in Elias National Park and watches on a speck of bedrock called Osier Island. By 5 years the island is engulfed by the glacier. It moved over 90 miles in that short period of time. By Memorial Day the glacier had crossed a strait and pushed a lot of dirt a far shore along the Pacific Ocean. Studies show that 20 other glaciers are also in a rapid advance. This article also describes the amount of ice and glaciers that covers the Earth in Alaska and northern parts of Canada and Russia. There have been major Ice Ages in the last 100,000 years and minor subsequent ones every 10,000 years. As long as more ice and snow accumulate, the glacier will grow.

What I have learned from this article is that glaciers are our planet’s premier sculptors and humble earth movers. The information in this article is out of date. I’m pretty sure that if someone looks up the glaciers in Alaska there will not be one glacier expanding. They will be retreating at a major rate. There is another factor in this day and age that they didn’t mention that is reportedly the main factor to warming temperatures and ice melting. That factor is global warming. I think the main moral of this story is that the Earth is a balanced and imposing force on the graphic look of the earth. Also the nature is wild and unpredictable.

National Geographic, VOL 171, NO1, January 1987, pg. 107, by: John L. Eliot
Tyler Franklin