Glacier Discoveries EarthCache
Hidden : 11/16/2012
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1 out of 5

Size: Size: not chosen (not chosen)

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Geocache Description:


The Glacier National Park represents the Columbia Mountains Natural Region of Canada. It encompasses part of the Selkirks and a small portion of the Purcell Ranges along the southeastern border of British Columbia. It is classified into four life zones - alpine tundra, alpine meadows, sub-alpine forest and interior rainforest. There are more than 400 glaciers pouring over the mountaintops, covering over 12% of the total park area with ice. Glacier Park was designated in 1886 as a 76 square kilometer reserve around Mount Macdonald and Roger's Pass. By 1930 the area had grown to a national park of 1350 square kilometers.
The Selkirks are located in the heart of the Columbia Mountains, surrounded by the Purcells to the east, the Monashees to the west and the Cariboos to the north. The rock here is some of the oldest on the planet, formed as much as 800 million years ago, much older than the predominantly sedimentary facies exposed in the Rocky Mountains to the east. It is a complex geological mix of metamorphic, sedimentary and igneous rock, characterized by towering, sharply angled peaks and narrow, steep-walled valleys.
This landscape is the result of alpine glacial erosion and fluvial erosion. Most of the Selkirk peaks are composed of very hard rock: quartzite, schist, marble, gneiss and granite. They erode slowly, breaking along fault lines of softer sedimentary rock. The resulting features such as horns, arêtes, ridges, cirques and hanging valleys retain their sharp edges despite their age. Where water is the erosional force, it cuts deep valleys rather than the broad u-shaped riverbeds of more meandering waterways.
A glacier consists quite simply of layers of snow each of which has built up from one year to the next. They occur with such high frequency in this part of Canada because of the high amount of snowfall in the Columbia Mountains, and the consistently lower temperatures at high elevations. In the park are up to 17 meters of snow falls each year. These amounts of snow are among the world's richest and feed the more than 400 glaciers. This prevents the snow accumulation from melting during the brief summer.
Glaciers usually originate in the basins or bowls between the mountains, gradually extending down the slopes. It is the buildup of ice in the bowl and its weight that eventually pushes the ice downhill, creating the movement of the glacier. Where the ‘flowing’ ice encounters rough or steep terrain, it breaks, forming the characteristic crevasses and seracs.
The Asulkan and Illecillewaet Glaciers were made famous by the Vaux family of Philadelphia who photographed and studied these rivers of ice between 1887 and 1923. In their early photographs, it is easy to see how much farther the toe of the ‘Great Glacier’, as it was known at the time, extended down into the valley. At this time it was only a short hike from the Glacier House Hotel to the snout. While there was a brief period of advancement during the 1960's and 70's, overall, the glacier is about 1.5 km shorter today. Therefore it is a much longer and more difficult trek today, across an avalanche path and a lateral moraine, which once flanked the ice. But it is wonderful.

There’s no question that the earth is warming up. Global temperatures are rising faster than any other time in the past thousand years. In Glacier NP, climate change appears to be melting the glaciers. Between 1850 and 2000, the glaciers in the park have receded significantly. Of the 205 glaciers recently studied, they have shrunk by an average of 57%. This means that ice covering an area of 176.4 km² has disappeared.
Ref.:
http://www.greatcanadianparks.com/bcolumbia/glacinp/index.htm,
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier-Nationalpark_(Kanada)
Info boards

In order to log this cache please email the cache owner the answers to the following questions (DO NOT post them in your log).
1) How tall and wide is the water tower, which could be filled with the lost water (info board).
2) Look at the pictures A and B (Info board).

Picture A



Picture B


a) Tell the years in which these photos were taken?
b)Calculate the decline of the glacier (distance in meters) in this time.
Given are the following assumptions: The first measurement was made by the Vaux family. The last was made in 2012. This glacier recedes each year assuming a constant rate.

After emailing your answers you can log this cache. We will contact you if there are problems with the answers. Logs without the mail will be deleted.
Happy caching

Additional Hints (No hints available.)



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