Welcome to the Icefields
The Columbia Icefields in the Canadian Rockies and Banff National Park are huge draws for tourism visits.The Icefields hang on the Continental Divide running along the Alberta and British Columbia borders.
They are, at present, about 28 kilometers long covering 300 square kilometers. The biggest modern era extent of the Icefields was reached in 1844 and they feed six major glaciers hanging from them – Athabasca, Dome, Columbia,Castleguard,Saskatchewan, and Stutfield.
While Banff National Park has many glaciers, the Columbia Icefields and these 6 named are the largest and most notorious.The melt water from the Icefields feeds the Athabasca River, Lake Athabasca, the Slave River, Great Slave Lake and the MacKenzie River eventually draining into the Arctic Ocean. While some of the glacial melt also feeds the Saskatchewan River and eventually into Hudson’s Bay, other waters feed into the Fraser and Columbia Rivers feeding into the Pacific.From the Editors of The Encyclopaedia Britannica:
Since the early 1950s, research has been particularly concentrated on the Athabasca and Saskatchewan glaciers. …….Historical records, mapping, and photographic information date back only to 1897, but tree-ring studies near the ice fronts have provided information that extends back several centuries. It is known that a major ice advance culminated on the Athabasca Glacier about 1715; its terminus was then more advanced than at any time in at least the preceding 350 years.
The ice receded after the 1715 advance. By the beginning of the 19th century, a readvance was under way, reaching another maximum position about 1840 that was almost as extensive as the earlier one. Then, changing climatic conditions forced another downwasting of the lower ice-field zone and reduced snow accumulation on its névé. The ensuing retreat of the Athabasca Glacier has continued except for brief standstills. The total amount of ice-front recession from the mid-19th to the late 20th century was about 1 mile (1.6 km). At the beginning of the 21st century, the glacier continued to recede as a result of global warming.
Global Warming?
- Are we the “cause” with our emissions?
- Are we just exacerbating an already existing natural cycle of warming and cooling?
You can read here from these links, on the debate and confusing issue of Global Warming :
- If Earth has warmed and cooled throughout history, what makes scientists think that humans are causing global warming now?
- The First Glacier Killed by Climate Change Is Getting a Haunting Memorial in Iceland
- Want to Fight Climate Change? Plant 1 Trillion Trees.
- The “great Global Warming – Climate change disappearance” IS a Major Inconvenient Truth, Except for Elites with an Agenda.
The Long Retreat
Columba Icefields – Athabasca and Dome Glacier – June 2019 where the glacier was in 1890.
If you read these articles, perhaps you will come away as I did. Confused, skeptical,worried and relieved – a strange mix I know! But I love these mountains and their Glaciers and I want them to be here for centuries to come. They are such wonders to view , to contemplate, and to be appreciated for their addition to this complex and interdependent synchronicity in Nature. ( And the grand design behind it! Raises another question – who is the designer ? ).View image
Just in case, or better yet – as a means of reliving the memories if you have seen them, or making a memory to go and see them – my online art gallery has image of the icefields and Banff so you can have that.
“Special moments in the rockies, captured in print forever”
8 Galleries – Art Battling Poverty, Canadian Rockies, Landscapes, Mountainscapes, Black and White, Panoramas, Trees, Photo Devotionals